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It rains the day Master Bruce dies.
Alfred listened to the comms trickle away. All of the usual wisecracks, all of the petty fights picked, all of it starts to die away as the fight gets harder than anything they experience. While he never knew Bruce to have the greatest sense of humor (he practically raised the boy; he knew he only started joking when Talia dropped Damian off on their doorstep), he knew Bruce would be encouraging the chatter if the fight was anything less than absolute hell. The chatter is a comfort.
The chatter died away.
He sat in the Batcave, dreaming up the worst possible scenarios. He thought about who might have gotten hurt in front of who. He thought about who might have been pushed to their breaking point. He even thought, in a moment of weakness, about who might have died in this battle.
He never imagined Bruce would have been amongst their ranks, but when the Batmobile pulled up and all of the vigilantes came tumbling out, he knew without even asking.
Damian steps out first, already stripped of his domino mask, revealing shielded eyes and a tight set of his lips. He does not wait for any of the others. He breezes inside, walking at a brisker pace than someone with a wrapped knee should.
Next comes Cassandra. She wears her full uniform, and she makes more noise than she ever has before as she stares after Damian. With a quick nod of apology towards the others, she starts following after him. She still hesitates when she reaches the exit of the Batcave, not sure if she does want to follow.
Tim emerges, shoulders hunched and eyes already red. He holds his helmet in his hand, his grip so hard and so white Alfred thinks it might shatter under the weight. When he notes Alfred staring at him, he starts to say something—starts to explain— but Alfred nods in understanding, and Tim lets out a sigh.
Duke follows after, trudging with heavy steps. He offers a crooked wave to Alferd, but he already starts to head away, not truly acknowledging anything around him. He knocks his hip against one of their gurneys, and he doesn’t even seem to notice. He just keeps walking faster and faster.
It leaves only Jason and Stephanie. When Alfred opens a door to lure one out, Jason shoots out, stomping past Alfred and rushing up the stairs. He thinks he can hear mumbled curses and muttered sobs, and Alfred’s stomach sinks.
Stephanie sprawls in the backseat, but when she sees Alfred, she makes room for him right away. She pats the seat next to him. He hesitates before sliding in next to her, closing the door tight.
“Hey, Alf,” she whispers, her voice shockingly fragile in the silence of the Batmobile. “I was really hoping someone else might give you this news.”
“You don’t have to say it.”
Her eyes flick over to him. She nods before shaking her head. “Wait, no. One of the protocols they teach you as a doctor is you have to say it. You can’t just apologize, and you can’t just show them. You have to say it to make it real.”
“Have you done a lot of reading on protocols?”
She smiles and ducks her head, even if the smile does not reach her eyes. “I did a lot after Tim died.”
He remembers how inconsolable Stephanie was after Tim died. She needed something to do with her hands at all times; she needed to stay in constant motion as if it would keep the weight of death from catching up to her. Yet, he thinks he could identify the moment it came crashing into her.
“I couldn’t let her become my sidekick,” Bruce said, not looking at Alfred, staring at the computer screen as if it might provide him more answers. “It would be a dishonor to Tim, and she isn’t ready.”
“She has been a superhero for a long time,” Alfred ventured.
He shook his head. “I can’t take on another person, not after I failed Tim. Alfred. I failed Tim. If I never would have involved him in this life, he never would have died. The blame lies solely on me.”
“It does not—”
“Alfred.” Bruce looked at him with bloodshot eyes, then. “Don’t make me hate you.”
“Bruce,” Stephanie says slowly, tasting the words as they come out, “died out there. He’s gone, Alf.”
“I had a theory.”
“I’m sorry to make it true.” She lets out a tiny, ragged laugh before she buries her face in her hands. “I’m sorry to make it true.”
He sits with her for a few minutes before he leaves Stephanie to her grief. As he travels through the Batcave, he puts up as many walls as he can. He will not fall apart in front of the children. He has dealt with death many times. He has lost many friends over the years. He can handle this.
But he has never dreamt of losing Bruce.
Parents should not bury their children.
He finds his way back to the kitchen. Damian sits at the counter, glaring at the calendar stuck to the fridge like it offends him. Right there, with his dark hair tousled from the shower someone forced him to take and the dark bags lining his face and the grim way he holds himself straight, he looks so much like Bruce Alfred has to stop in the doorway of the kitchen to steady himself.
Then, he steps inside and goes to prepare something vegetarian for Damian. They have been fighting, on and off, for the better part of a week. He must be starving, and he would never say it in the chaos. Maybe, in the chaos, Damian forgot he needed to eat entirely. Bruce has— had —done that many times.
“Master Damian,” he starts as he heats up the pan.
Damian doesn’t move. His gaze swivels, though, catching Alfred in its icy blankness. “Yes?”
“Is there…” The words taste worse than he expected. He spent years bearing witness to all sorts of death—he saw his friends die in the war during his youth, he buried his best friends the days after Bruce came back horribly scarred, he even watched the light get stomped out of little Timothy Drake—yet these words hurt worse somehow. “Is there a body? To bury? Or cremate?”
“Bury,” Damian says. “He would want to be buried with his parents.”
That would be a yes then.
“Where is it?” Alfred ventures.
Damian looks at him. “Clark Kent is delivering it later. He’s… in shock.”
He makes a face in distaste, and Alfred looks away. He wonders if he should suggest inviting the Kents over, just to have a more comforting presence in the house. He knows how much Damian enjoys the company of Jonathan Kent. It might make something louder than the grief pressing down on every corner of the house.
Instead, though, Alfred stays silent.
“Tt. He’s being ridiculous,” Damian says after a second. He gets up from the counter chair and nods towards the meal Alfred is halfway from assembling. “Bring that to my father’s office. I need to get to work.”
“You could take a day to mourn,” Alfred says.
He shakes his head. “There is no time for something as frivolous as that. I need to get his affairs in order. I need to make sure Wayne Enterprises doesn’t fall in the hands of some stupid secretary of Father’s. I need to make sure guardianship will be mine, and foster care does not attempt to take Jason away. I need to start making plans for the funeral; everyone knew Bruce Wayne in Gotham. This will deliver a blow.”
It will deliver a bigger blow to his family.
Damian breezes out of the room, though, determined not to be stopped, and Alfred is left alone with his cooking. He ducks his head and tries to push out all of the thoughts of a much younger Bruce Wayne hovering by his hip, trying to figure out how to best help him cook. At some point, Bruce became obsessed with being helpful to Alfred.
Of course, this phase happened in between phases of him being an absolute hellion to Alfred. It was difficult, those early days. He needed to convince Bruce he should apply to college. He needed to convince Bruce he couldn’t dress up as a bat every single night. He needed to convince Bruce he had a steadier hand when it came to stitches, and he would gladly help Bruce stay safe.
But that little phase, back when Bruce was around sixteen, might be one of his favorite times spent with Bruce. Sure, it ended up with him getting banned from the kitchen—somehow, he managed to burn tomato soup and grilled cheese, a rather pedestrian meal Alfred rarely made—but it was worth it to hear Bruce’s affronted laughter when Alfred suggested, dryly, he shouldn’t cook everything at the highest temperature possible.
“According to all laws of physics,” Bruce tried back then, “it should cut down the cooking time, and you’ll have more free time.”
“Until you ruin the first attempt at the meal, and you have to remake it.”
Of course, Bruce wanted to be right, so he suffered through a horribly blackened lasagna in an attempt to prove Alfred wrong.
He finishes cooking, blinking back sudden tears, and gathers the food on the tray. Then, he walks through the quiet Manor—he wonders where the others have disappeared to, he knows all of them are home right now, even Duke—to Bruce’s office.
“Master Damian—”
Right as the door opens, he hears the crash of a nameplate to the floor. Alfred looks up to see Jason, not Damian, perched on top of Bruce’s desk, surrounded by a pile of rippedup pieces of paper and broken pens.
Bruce’s golden nameplate sits on the floor, mangled and bent.
Jason looks at him. Then, before Alfred can say anything, he throws himself off the desk and slams his boot—he still wears a bizarre combination of his Wingman suit and civilian clothes—against it. It snaps under the force. Jason only stomps again, though, and the floor quakes from the effort.
“My boy,” Alfred starts.
Jason shakes his head, and he keeps stomping.
“Master Jason.” Alfred eases the tray down in one of the armchairs on the side of the room. He’d place it on the desk, but he doesn’t trust Jason not to send it flying, and he’d rather not pick up shards of the plate right now.
When Alfred gets close enough to place a hand on Jason’s shoulder, he wrenches away like he has been physically hit. He stares up at Alfred, one of his eyes swollen and turning an unsettling shade of purple as they speak, and he spits the words out. “He said he wouldn’t leave. He said he would always be here.”
“My boy.”
He tries to pull Jason into a hug.
Jason dances away, swiping a hand through his messy hair. “He promised.”
Alfred can’t remember when Bruce would have made that promise, but he knows he would have. Did he whisper those words over Jason’s broken body after he got attacked by the Red Hood? Did he comfort Jason with those words after he allowed the Red Hood back in the house? Did he tell Jason that when Jason started showing those clear signs of growing up, when Jason started to become a young man?
Bruce took Jason to the DMV last week to get his permit, and he promised he would teach Jason how to drive.
Now, Bruce would never even sit in the backseat while Jason drove.
“Master Jason,” Alfred tries again. “We should get you cleaned up. We should get ice on that eye of yours, and you should change into something more comfortable.”
“He promised,” Jason repeats, blinking back tears. “He was fucking Batman, and he still died. If there was anyone I thought would stay…”
“You’re not alone—”
“I’m going to take a shower,” he says abruptly. He runs a shaking hand over his face, wincing when it makes rough contact with his eye, and then, he stalks out of the room, but not before he allows one last stomp on the nameplate.
Alfred watches him disappear, and his heart twists. Jason had always been the one Alfred felt closest with. Maybe it was because Jason was one of the few Waynes who knew how to fend for himself. Sure, Bruce could dress up as a bat, and Damian could take out any enemy with a sword, but neither of them knew how to cook and clean and look after themselves.
“This seems unfair,” Alfred noted one time, watching Jason do his homework in the living room without being asked.
Bruce looked at him, startled. “What?”
“You were such a hell child,” Alfred said, smothering his smile when he saw the way Bruce’s eyes went wild when Alfred swore. No matter how old Bruce got, he was always shocked to hear Alfred curse. “You should have gotten more hell children.”
“Damian was pretty hellish,” Bruce tried to argue. “Maybe I’ve just gotten better with age.”
“God help us all if you choose to adopt another child.” Alfred sniffed, but Bruce offered that smile of his that never failed to win him to his side. If Bruce brought another child home, he would love that kid just as dearly as he loved Bruce. Their family would continue to expand, solely due to Bruce’s large heart.
And they took a blow when Tim died, but the family moved past it. One day, when Tim returned, they had the family again. They stopped grieving apart; Alfred stopped watching Bruce destroy himself in his grief.
He wonders if he will have to see Bruce’s children destroy themselves in their grief.
Elsewhere, he hears a shower start up, and it startles him back into action. He picks up the tray and starts heading down the hallway to one of the other offices. He still needs to get the food to Damian, one way or another.
He barely makes it down the hallway before a blur almost knocks him to the ground. He takes a step back, and he raises an eyebrow.
Tim pauses, shifting guiltily from foot to foot. He has slung a packed duffle bag over his shoulder, and judging by the speed he already changed into his ‘civilian’ clothes, Alfred can fathom what exactly he might be doing.
“Are you running away?” Alfred asks after a moment of the two of them just studying each other, waiting for someone to make the first move.
Tim starts to say something before hesitating. He runs a hand through his hair. “Does it count as running away if I’m a grown adult?”
“Yes.”
“Then… yeah?” Tim sighs and deflates back against the wall. “Alfred. I can’t stay here.”
“Why not?”
“Because…” He ducks his head, and for a second, he looks exactly like he did as an insecure little boy. Alfred’s heart squeezes at the sight, and Alfred averts his gaze until Tim maintains his composure. “I was only ever back because of Bruce, and now, Bruce is gone. I don’t want to make things hard for anyone. Well. Harder for anyone.”
“It would be harder,” Alfred says, taking his time to say the words and giving them enough time to sink into Tim’s mind, “if you left. You are a part of this family, and I would hate to lose multiple people today.”
His head darts up, and he lets out a strangled noise. “But I don’t…”
“This is your home, Master Timothy. You are welcome here.”
Bruce would want Tim here. Bruce would want Tim to be part of the family. For the past few years, he has been hovering at the peripherals, afraid to make too drastic of waves, afraid to mess up, and Bruce always wanted to take that fear away from Tim. To know his death sent him running away would hurt him.
“I never thought of the Manor as much of a home,” Bruce confessed to him one time, standing in the doorway of Tim’s room and peeking in at the sleeping child just to count heads. “It was my home, of course, but I never thought people would seek it out. It was a big, empty house for only two people.”
“If only someone would stop filling rooms,” Alfred said wryly.
Bruce looked over with a hapless grin. “If only. But… I don’t know. It makes me happy to know someone feels safe here. Tim told me today that he can’t believe he didn’t know the difference between house and home today, and I just… can you believe that? We have a bigger home now.”
“We have a bigger home now,” Alfred agreed.
He ran a hand through his hair. “Thank you, Alfie. For giving us the chance to have a bigger home.”
Tim hesitates again.
Then, he sighs. “I’ll wait it out. I didn’t want to leave today anyway.”
“Good.” And Alfred means it. He still waits in the hallway to see Tim retreat back to his room, and he makes a mental note to see if he can nudge any of his siblings to go sit with Tim. Alfred could always try after he delivers the food.
He glances down at the tray, and he sighs. It must be cold by now.
Alfred retreats to the kitchen. As he works on scraping the meal into the trash can and cleaning off the plate, he can feel a hot gaze settling on his back. If not for the familiarity of the situation, he would go running for his gun and prove he knows how to defend himself.
Bruce and Alfred used to argue about that.
“You can’t come get me,” Bruce hissed, probably over his stab wound. “I don’t want you out on the streets.”
“I have lived in Gotham my whole life,” Alfred said, already grabbing the keys for the Batmobile. If Bruce hadn’t wanted him to be able to come get him, he could have hidden things better in the mess of the Batcave (though back then, Bruce insisted he couldn’t clean anything. Not yet). “I know how to handle myself. You are the one in danger right now.”
“I’m telling you no.”
“Where were you stabbed again? The leg?” Alfred hummed as he started up the car. “I don’t think you’ll be able to stop me.”
As soon as he finishes putting the plates away, he turns to face Cassandra Cain, perched on top of the counters, her face passive and her eyes blank.
“Mistress Cassandra, you know my thoughts on sitting on top of the counters.”
Her boots are tucked beneath her, still coated in blood and dirt and grime. Alfred wonders how much of that blood belongs to Bruce. He hesitates before reaching out a hand to her. She stares at him for a few seconds before taking it, letting him tug her down.
Then, she shifts over and leans against the window. She blinks at him, eyes heavy, before she starts signing. “Where is everyone?”
“If only I knew.”
She starts to say something else before hesitating. She closes her eyes. Then, with her eyes still closed as if to distance herself from the intimacy of this moment, she starts again. “I should be a good sister right now. He was not my dad.”
He reaches out a hand and places it on her shoulder. She startles under the touch, but she makes no attempt to push him away. Instead, she blinks up her dark eyes and stares at him, and he thinks he can see the gleam of tears there.
“You are allowed to mourn him.”
At first, Cassandra and Bruce had not seen eye-to-eye. Bruce saw the videos forwarded to him, videos of Cass killing as she was trained to be an assassin, but it only took a few moments to realize Cass was never going to be an assassin. She might be quiet and deadly, but she was much too gentle.
In a way, she reminded Alfred a lot of Bruce. They both held that anger so tight in their stomach, and it somehow blossomed into justice. Neither of them would ever kill; they kept the same creed.
Cass nods after a few seconds. “Is it okay if I don't check on them?”
“If you need space, you can take space.”
He can’t imagine what it must be like to be Cass. She reads body language better than spoken language. She could see every facet of grief weighing on their small family. Alfred thinks he can see the bulk of it, but every little moment of their grief he might somehow miss, he thinks he might treasure that. He can shoulder their burdens—he is their grandfather in the same way Bruce was their father—but he can only shoulder so much before he would crumble under the pressure.
“The same goes for you,” Cass signs after a second.
Alfred nods. “The same goes for me. I don’t need space right now, however. I need to see each of you with my own eyes, and I need to know you are alright.”
She stares at him.
Then, she points out the window, indicating where the last grandchild would be hiding, far away from the rest of the family but still on the estate.
“Thank you, Mistress Cassandra,” Alfred says. She offers a halfhearted smile before burying her face back in her knees.
He grabs an umbrella and steps outside. The rain falls all around him, but it distracts him from the whirl of his thoughts. Like this, he doesn’t have to think about what just happened. He can let muscle memory take him down this path, leading farther and farther away from the family they forged together.
Bruce chose them, and they chose Bruce. Even the one Damian attracted on the outskirts—Cassandra—came to this house and found a way to become a part of their family, even if Bruce confessed it made him feel like a ‘grandfather.’
“I never thought I’d live long enough to be a grandfather,” Bruce confessed once, his guard taken down by the morphine drip in the crook of his elbow.
Alfred nodded as he continued to fuss over Bruce’s injuries. He always managed to come back with so many. If he counted how many injuries he helped with over the years, he thought it would reach into the thousands now. “Well, Master Bruce, you have made it. Does it make you feel old?”
“Oh, so old.” His gaze skipped over to his oldest son, fussing over Cassandra in the most distant way he could. “But also so proud.”
When Alfred reaches the graveyard, all memories go flying out of his head. A figure sits on the bench positioned near the two most prominent graves. He has his head turned towards the sky, letting the rain wash away the events of the day.
“Master Duke,” Alfred calls.
Duke turns to him, eyes glittering. “He left Damian Batman.”
“What was that?”
“He left Damian Batman,” he repeats, and Alfred’s stomach sinks. “He set up a messaging account to send me his will in case he died, which is all kinds of fucked up to begin with, because I was not ready to look at his will, much less get a text message about it moments after he died, and he left Damian Batman.”
Alfred eases down next to Duke. Even with the umbrella, the rain still soaks his uniform. He tries to hold himself with more decorum, unlike all of the rascals he has managed to raise through the years, but here he is, sitting in the rain with his eldest grandson.
Once, it had been Alfred and Bruce and Duke, an angry pre-teen who just lost both his parents to the Joker Gas. While neither died, he would go his whole life without either parent checking up on him. There would be no more report card celebrations or birthday cakes or hugs after bad days. Duke had an empty home and a neighbor willing to take him in and a fire in his stomach, lit by the injustice of being left alone so early.
Bruce hadn’t known how to raise Duke, but he had loved Duke right away.
“Was I even a son to him?” Duke asks, his question directed at the twin headstones. “Did he even consider leaving me his most prized possession? I was Batkid, Alfred. I wasn’t Redbird or Drake or anything. I was Batkid first!”
“He cared about you, Master Duke,” Alfred says softly.
Duke looks at him, tears now bubbling down his cheeks despite him swiping at them frantically.
Then, he lets out a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “It was us at the beginning, Alf. Me and you and him before everyone else came along.”
“He used to worry about you.” Alfred remembers endless conversations about how reckless Duke was and whether or not he was parenting Duke right and should he force Duke to live in the Manor to keep an eye on him and was it wrong for Bruce to break the no metas in Gotham rule for Duke. “He wanted to make sure he did right by you.”
Duke sniffles. “He did.”
The two of them stare at Bruce’s parents’ headstones for a long time.
Alfred hopes Bruce gets to see his parents again. At long last, Bruce gets to hug his parents tight and let go of the anger boiling inside him for years. He gets to love and be loved in return. He gets to know he left his earth better than when he left it.
Alfred only wishes he hadn’t left it.
He thinks Bruce let go of his anger with every child he welcomed into their life. When he first brought home Duke, Alfred thought Duke would end up running away and never returning. He never thought he’d see Duke become a young police officer and, when Duke realized that wasn’t the path for him, a young artist and poet and writer. Then came Damian and Timothy and Stephanie and Jason and Cassandra.
Bruce loved his children.
And he was loved in return.
Once, it had been Alfred and Bruce and nobody else.
And now, Bruce is gone.