Chapter Text
“Miss Barbara,” Alfred greets, as she opens the door. “I have a favour to ask of you.”
“You don’t ask anyone for favours,” she says, letting him in and showing him to the kitchen so he can load her fridge with the dishes he’s brought. “Except for getting me to stop Dick from trying to learn how to cook that one year.”
“Considering he was producing hazardous materials rather than food, I feel I was justified in that request,” Alfred says, light, as he slides a tureen of her favorite squash soup into the fridge. Many more containers follow.
When he’s done with that, she makes him a cup of tea that they both pretend is up to his exacting standards and he takes a seat at her kitchen counter. She wheels to a stop across from him.
“So why are you really here?” Barbara asks. Her eyes are shrewd behind her mug when she raises it for a sip. “Not that you don’t come by and drop things off regularly, but you usually keep it pretty minimal.”
He gives her a faint smile. “I need your assistance with something, though I’m afraid it may be a somewhat sensitive subject. And I must confess that I’m not certain what your moral standpoint will be on my planned course of action.”
Barbara raises an eyebrow. “That’s ominous.”
“Indeed. Since I prefer to be straight with you, I’ll just say it: I’m going to kill the Joker.”
There’s a beat of silence, and then Barbara goes, “You’re not joking.” Her tone is flat and inflectionless.
Alfred inclines his head. “I’m completely serious.”
He meets her eyes, and after a moment she swallows hard and says, quiet and strong, “Good.”
Alfred waits, because there’s clearly more. After a minute, she rubs a hand over her knee and clears her throat. “He hurt me. And he… he killed Jason. I loved that kid, Alfred. I loved that kid. I’m always going to be angry about what that bastard did to me and did to Jason, and killing him isn’t going to fix any of it, but goddamn it, I can’t tell you I don’t want it to happen.”
“I know,” he says, because he was the one who took over her physiotherapy in the intervening period between her first physiotherapist leaving, unable to handle her justified anger, and the second one arriving (this time vetted by both Alfred and Dr. Thompkins).
There had been a lot of yelling, and then crying, and then a mixture of both. Alfred had just let her do what she needed to do. There was nothing she could do but survive, however she had to do that. Her rage was earned, and burned bright. Still does. She is not a woman who is lightly wronged.
“What do you need me to do?” Barbara asks, her voice steady, meeting his gaze with clear eyes. Alfred once told her she had a steel backbone, and he meant it.
So he tells her.
(On his way out, she asks him what he would have done if she tried to stop him. He just gives her a mild smile, not mentioning the sedative up his sleeve, one that wouldn’t interact with her medications but would keep her asleep and unable to contact any Bat for several hours.
He would have respected her decision, but he would not have let her interfere with his.)
One Tuesday in late fall, at around three in the morning, the cameras in the west side of Arkham Asylum loop.
If they were still working, they would have captured a domino-masked man in a black three-piece suit striding down the hallway to the maximum security section with a violin case in hand. They would have recorded as he ducked out of sight of three rounds of patrol, and took the last (unavoidable) one out with sedative darts.
They would have shown him entering the area that housed Gotham’s worst nightmares with lifted passes from those last guards and someone’s finger pulled from a pocket, and they would have shown his face hardening beneath the domino as he disappeared past those final doors.
But they weren’t working, so they didn’t.
Alfred feels bad about the head psychiatrist’s finger, he does, but not enough to leave it attached to the man. He’d bandaged the hand very neatly, and kept the finger packed in ice the entire time. He even severed the finger at the midpoint, for easier reattachment.
The man had been sedated so that Alfred could deliver him and the finger to the hospital after he was done here. There was no reason why doctors wouldn’t be able to reattach it with little consequence.
It’s a sign that he’s gone soft, all this planning for a mediocre man who is mediocre at his job, but raising kids will do that to you, Alfred supposes.
The finger does its job in getting him into the restricted area that holds the most dangerous Rogues, and he walks past all the cells, windowless and soundproof, until he reaches the last. Each step is heavy, though he could easily make them silent. His black leather wingtips click on the tile.
Alfred has always done best with a purpose. He is a man who comes alive under a goal, and this one is backed by fury and righteousness and so much love it is searing hot in his veins. He is not a violent man, but he is so very good at violence.
He pulls the finger from its ice, unlocks the biometric lock, then tucks the finger away. And then he heaves the deadbolt aside, and steps in.
The Joker heard him coming, of course. He’s chained to the wall, with a reach that ends three feet before the doorframe, but Alfred is not a stupid man, and he pulls out his stun gun, fitted with an electrified component, and steps forward quickly, jabbing it into the monster’s gut before stepping back equally as quickly.
The Joker seizes on the floor as the currents run through his wiry body. The shiv falls from his spasming hand, and Alfred kicks it aside.
“That’s no way to treat a host,” the Joker gasps out when he regains his breath, face in its customary rictus grin, eyes manic and bright with the surprise of the visit and the voltage, green hair falling greasy over his ash-white forehead. “Who is my visitor? Who’s come to see me?”
Alfred says nothing. He bends to rest the violin case on the floor, unzipping it to reveal a bone saw, a tape recorder, a folded bag, and a deconstructed De Lisle carbine. The gun comes together quickly in his hands, until he’s tucking two .45 cartridges into his breast pocket, clicking the recorder on, and rising to his feet.
“Ooh, a gun!” the Joker exclaims with glee, spotting the firearm. There’s no concern in his wild gaze. “Has someone come to be naughty? Tsk, tsk. This facility is supposed to reform my mind, not my body, silly goose! They don’t like messes here.”
Beneath the mania, his tone has edged into frustration. The Joker doesn’t care about pain, when it comes down to it. He wants attention most of all, and Alfred is withholding it.
So Alfred makes eye contact. “My name is Alfred Pennyworth,” he tells the creature. “And I am here to kill you.”
“Alfred! Alfred the Great was a shy king,” the Joker sings out, “who found it not much to his liking, making do with cornflakes– urk.”
It’s not the most refined weapon, but the stun gun does have its benefits. The muscles in the Joker’s face dance as the electricity runs through them, his hands jumping and body twitching, his lips drawing wider and wider into an even more painful-looking smile than his usual one. Alfred watches impassionately.
The smoke bomb rolls from the Joker’s nerveless fingers, stopping against Alfred’s boot. He kicks it into the opposite corner.
When the monster catches his breath again, showing no sign of irritation at his thwarted attack, he continues in a raspy, wheezing breath, “–cos he’d burned all the cakes–”
“Do be quiet,” Alfred says, quiet and stern. He’s angry about Jason, about Barbara, about his family’s suffering, but all of that is distant right now. Right now there is only the cool, simmering focus of a man who has come to enact vengeance, not the weeping grief of a grandfather.
The Joker ignores this, and sings out, “–while hiding his face from the Viking! Not very polite, King Alfred. You shouldn’t meddle. Shouldn’t hide that face of yours. Maybe I’ll give it some more character—“
When the monster lunges forward, pulling a syringe from his sleeve, Alfred lets the needle break against the suit’s Kevlar weave, knocking the syringe from the Joker’s hand a second later. The liquid inside is a sick shade of green, no doubt designed to provoke some kind of terrible mania.
The stun gun comes out again. Alfred’s usually more reserved, but his anger is repressed, not gone. Never gone.
“You have spent far too long terrorizing this city,” Alfred says, measured and even. He waits for the Joker’s writhing to cease before continuing, the creature rolling his head to look up at Alfred with his manic grin still wide and vivid, though emptier this time. He has no more tricks left, and they both know it.
Behind the domino, Alfred knows his own eyes have gone flat and hard. “You maimed a dear friend. You killed my grandson. These are not crimes which will go unpunished. They are not people who will go unavenged.”
And Alfred loads and cocks the rifle, and he steps forward, and the Joker’s face suddenly goes cold. He’s realized, apparently, that Alfred isn’t going to make a production of this. There will be no great drama, no elaborate plan to weasel out of. Alfred is going to kill him right here, on the floor of his Arkham cell, where no one will see, with a plain gun. Theatrics are for those who don’t enjoy them.
“Batsy won’t like this,” the Joker says, a last resort, eyes glimmering and insane. “You feel like tussling with ol’ Batman, King Alfred?”
“I don’t answer to the Batman,” Alfred tells him, voice solid as stone. “The Batman answers to me.”
And he pulls the trigger.
The cameras in Arkham Asylum go back to live feed at 4:07 in the morning. They are seven minutes too late to catch the man in the domino mask and the suit leaving, his violin case in one hand and an unmarked square box in the other. If one saw it and was familiar with hospitals, they might recognize it as an organ transfer bag. Of course, no one at all did see, so this is a moot point.
At 4:10, the next round of guards approaching the maximum security area will find the previous round out cold, courteously propped up against the wall.
At 4:16, the Joker’s headless body will be discovered in his cell and positively identified.
At 4:17, Arkham Asylum will go into full lockdown.
At 4:31, the director of psychiatry will be dropped off at Gotham General, sedated and with his pointer finger in a bag of ice taped to his pajama shirt, the time of severing noted down in sharpie on the plastic. The finger will be reattached with minimal issues.
At 4:58, Alfred Pennyworth will arrive at a dingy apartment in Crime Alley, and knock on the door.
“Alfie,” Jason says, opening the door, his face pale and drawn but determined. “I’m sorry. I meant what I said. I can’t go home while he’s still out there.”
“Then it’s a good thing he’s not still out there,” Alfred says, and pushes his way into the apartment. When he turns back, Jason is standing there, frozen, at the door, like he’s trying to process what Alfred said. “Come here, dear boy.”
Jason goes.
Alfred puts the square box down on the kitchen table, and unzips it. He flips the lid open. He’s not particularly fond of gratuitous violence, nor is he much for dismemberment. But this had a twin purpose: firstly, he didn’t want to leave it for any of Gotham’s forces to experiment on, and secondly, he believed Jason would need the proof.
So that’s why when Jason Todd steps forward to look into the case, the dead, glazed eyes of the Joker stare back.
The monster wasn’t smiling, at the end. His mouth is slack with shock, face drained of any remaining colour, the white cast to his skin tinged blue in death. His head has been neatly sawed off between the C3 and C4 vertebrae, and there’s only a small pool of congealed blood staining the bottom of the case. He is very, very dead.
Jason reaches out to touch, like he’s afraid it’s a hallucination. He shudders, the movement wracking his entire body, when his fingertips make contact with the clammy skin of the Joker. Then his hand drops, and his eyes close tightly, his whole face screwing up.
Jason is a big man, now. Bruce’s size, maybe bigger. He’s got broad shoulders and the height to match, effortlessly strong looking. But right now, with Alfred’s gun still cooling in the violin case and his dear grandson’s killer dead and brought as proof of Alfred’s devotion, Jason looks just like that little boy he first met.
Grimy and scared and defiant, so bulwarked until someone showed him kindness and he just crumbled beneath it. The first time Alfred hugged Jason, the boy had shuddered just like he does now. Like his whole world was being rewritten, like he was remembering what it was like to be a loved thing. Like he had forgotten what kindness was.
“I once told you I had a gun I would use if a grown man ever touched you again. I don’t make such promises lightly.”
“Alfie,” Jason chokes out, and Alfred sets his violin case down and folds his dear, dear grandson into his arms, Jason’s body curving forward until he’s crunched himself down low, so that Alfred’s arms encircle him in a protective shield. “Alfie, I mattered. You loved me. I’m safe.”
“Oh, my boy,” Alfred murmurs, “You always mattered. We always loved you. New shelters in Park Row. Reading programs. Scholarships. You were never gone. You were always going to be here with us, even if you never returned. You were always going to be home.”
Jason’s sobbing now, big, ugly, wracking cries. Alfred just holds him, spine bent upwards to take the weight of a man whose body has forgotten malnutrition.
“He didn’t need to die for you to have mattered, but I understand why you needed him gone. Whatever you need, my boy, this family will provide. I promised to keep you safe,” and here Alfred’s own voice falters, his throat tight all of a sudden, the pulsing grief behind his ribcage still alive and nauseating, “and I will not fail a second time.”
Jason’s hands are curled into the back of Alfred’s suit jacket. When he was younger he did that too. Like he was afraid someone would pull him away, and he’d need the grip to stay in place, stay under the shelter of Alfred’s arms.
Jason is a big enough man now that no one would ever be able to separate him from Alfred if he did not want to be separated, but that hardly matters. Alfred is only half holding the big man. Alfred is also holding the twelve-year-old he met first, and the fifteen-year-old he met last. They are so small, and so scared.
So Alfred holds tighter, and they stand there in the Red Hood’s kitchen, the Joker’s blood congealing on the inside of a bag, the Gotham morning rising outside in a haze of red and smog. A grandfather and his grandson.
Jason is gulping for air, heaving and sobbing as he is rocked in Alfred’s arms, years of fear and pain unraveled. Not gone, but undone, so that perhaps one day the threads of them can be braided back into his life, something that can be healed over even if it cannot be fixed. Scar tissue, rather than a constant infection.
It’s an hour or more before Jason stops crying. Alfred doesn’t care.
He has all the time in the world.
Bruce meets him in the Cave. Alfred left Jason to pack and process, after extracting a promise that the man would be at the Manor by noon.
Alfred has a lot to do before then, beginning with incinerating the Joker’s head until there’s nothing left but dust and ending with informing Dick about the new developments and making some of those carrot muffins Jason always liked.
(His service weapon is back in his quarters, in the safe Bruce has never been able to find. That’s what it was, after all – his service weapon. Issued to him when he’d been with the British commandos. The De Lisle carbine is still one of the quietest guns ever made. When Alfred lined the shots up and took them, watching the Joker’s chest go mangled and red, they hadn’t even hurt his ears.)
Bruce is here, though, and Alfred– well. He has not been looking forward to this conversation. He left a packet of information for Bruce when he left, explaining that Jason was alive, and that Alfred was going to take care of an errand before Jason could return. It was signed with the codeword that meant Alfred was in his right mind – “Army of Ghosts,” courtesy of a fourteen-year-old Jason Todd.
Alfred had not left behind anything indicating his intentions toward the Joker, but he hadn’t needed to. Bruce is an intelligent man. He already has the photos from the GCPD database pulled up on the Batcomputer.
Alfred walks past both Bruce and the screen and ignites the incinerator in the very back of the Cave, tipping the bag in and securing the area before lighting it. Then he turns to Bruce.
The man is lingering, half-in and half-out of the Batsuit, his hair matted with sweat in the way that speaks of a long night in the cowl. The juxtaposition of the plain white t-shirt Bruce has on above where the Batsuit is knotted around his waist is perhaps emblematic of how he must feel right now, Alfred’s first ward. Partly a man, partly something more. Partly a father, partly a son. Partly relieved, partly furious.
Alfred isn’t quite sure why he’s feeling that last emotion — Bruce has always known what kind of man he is.
Alfred taught him the language of violence that is still the one Bruce speaks with the most fluency, after all. And when Edward Jenkins slipped something in Bruce’s sparkling fruit juice when he was ten, he had to go to the hospital for three broken fingers after getting mugged shortly after leaving the event. How unfortunate. How unfortunate that it kept happening until high society men and women stopped getting ideas about sad, isolated little boys with lots and lots of money.
For all of Alfred’s mildness, he has never once pretended to be any kind of man but the one he is. Not around his family.
“Alfred,” Bruce says. His throat works for a moment, before he says, “I don’t know if I can…”
Alfred raised this man. He knows what he’s going to say next. “I don’t need you to,” he tells Bruce, his beloved son. “It isn’t an act that needs forgiving. Do not ask me to regret what I have done. I do not ask you to condone it. I am not you, and I am not under your authority. Whether you remember it or not, you are under mine.”
When he checks the incinerator, the ash is so fine it could float on the wind and barely be seen. Alfred plugs in the codes to destroy even that and disperse it through filters until there’s absolutely nothing, nothing left.
They stand there for a second in silence as the machine whirs along, diametrically opposed. Bruce looks– stunned isn’t the right word. Devastated, maybe.
After a moment of not speaking, just watching the fire leap and jump in the grate until the chemical processes begin again, Alfred moves toward the case.
The damned case. Alfred would prefer to dismantle the entire thing, but he settles for retrieving the box he set aside for this exact purpose, opening the front of the case, and pulling the uniform down in lightning-quick movements, folding it into the box fast enough that Bruce doesn’t have a chance to do anything but make a choked noise, still frozen.
Then Alfred tucks the box into one of the Cave’s many nooks, and eyes the case again. After a second, he retrieves a screwdriver and carefully removes the plaque, tucking that into the box and then the box away again.
Bruce is pale and unsettled, still standing in front of the Batcomputer, only barely having turned to watch Alfred work, like his feet are glued to the floor. “Why,” he finally gets out, rough and rasping. “Why the memorial?”
“Jason is coming home, dear boy,” Alfred says, “And I have put up with that thing for long enough. I will not allow the instrument you used for your own torture to hurt your son as well.”
A Good Soldier.
There’s a moment of tension, there, like Bruce wants to deny the case’s pain, the purpose of it as an endless lash against his own back. For a moment, Alfred thinks he may actually have to put Bruce on the ground. It’s been a long time, but for all that Bruce is in prime condition, trained as well as a human being can possibly be, Alfred was his first teacher, and Alfred is a man who does not lose fights.
(The Justice League likes to joke that Batman has contingency plans for everyone but himself. This is not true. Alfred is the contingency plan for a Batman that must be stopped, as he is the contingency plan to so many other things.)
He would prefer not to, but he will. Gently, but firmly. That is how he tried to raise Bruce.
The tension swells, and then breaks. Bruce’s shoulders slump. Defeat paints itself across his face.
Oh, my boy, Alfred thinks, heart hurting, You are what you must be. You are a good man. But you could not do this, and it had to be done.
There’s a beep, and Alfred strides toward the incinerator.
The processing is done, and, satisfied, Alfred strips off his jacket and waistcoat, tossing those in as well and running the machine again. He doesn’t bother to supervise this time. It’s not like they don’t both know whose blood is on the clothing.
Besides, he has better things to do. He has an oven to preheat, and an eldest grandson to call.
To soften the blow of it all, Alfred rests a hand on Bruce’s broad shoulder for a moment on his way to the stairs. Before he ascends up to the Manor, wingtips pristine on the lowest step, he says, “My dear boy. One of us had to do it. This wasn’t only a mercy to Jason.”
And then he is gone, and Bruce is alone in his empty Cave, the Joker’s bloodied cell splashed across the screen, the glass case empty and hollow, the air smelling like dust and smoke and ash.
Alfred tells Dick, and then Tim.
Dick is a forty-five minute drive from Wayne Manor. He makes it in twenty-five. Tim is over from Drake Manor in less than three minutes. (Tomorrow, Barbara Gordon and Kate Kane and Stephanie Brown will be invited over, and told. Dr. Thompkins too, in time, and Clark Kent. Assorted others. But that is tomorrow, and the days after. For now, it is just the four of them here, to welcome the lost member of their flock home.)
When Dick and Tim arrive, Alfred answers their questions perfunctorily. Dick looks like a ghost, pale and drawn, leashed hope coiled tightly in his every movement. He moves slowly, like he’s in a daze. Alfred only keeps him in the Manor by informing him that Jason would be over soon, and it would be best to let him come when he is ready. Tim is vibrating with energy, swinging between being paper-white with nerves and flushed with excitement.
Bruce is a silent shadow through the Manor. When Alfred passes by him the second time, Bruce gives him an unreadable look, something sad and despairing. The same kind of pained hope Dick is carrying. Alfred touches him on the arm and says, “He’s coming home, Master Bruce.”
He can see the moment Bruce lets it go, the moment Bruce accepts it. What has happened has happened. He has no power over it.
And there are more important things to focus on – namely, his son. Gratitude and grief and relief and fear and love swell like a tidal wave on his face, wiping away the dark shadow of Batman and showing nothing but a father underneath. “Alfred,” he says, very quietly. Two syllables, laden with meaning.
Alfred sighs, a bare whisper of breath, and draws Bruce close, the man bent down until he almost fits in Alfred’s arms, the way he once did. “I know, my dear boy. I know.”
A service weapon. That’s what it’s called, the gun he keeps in his quarters. A service weapon. And that service is done for his family, for these beloveds that he will keep safe if it takes all his blood and teeth and sweat. Dig deep enough in any Wayne, and you find Pennyworth. Dig deep enough in Pennyworth, and you find all the Waynes.
Alfred runs a hand over the back of Bruce’s head, thinking of all the children he has held like this, body bent over them like a shield, knowing all the terrible things he would do to protect the goodness of them.
Bruce, he thinks, is asked so often to be a father, and has such a desire to be one, that he sometimes forgets he is a son. Alfred does not. He holds him tighter, before sighing.
“Why don’t you go wait in the sitting room with Masters Richard and Timothy?” Alfred asks, drawing back, Bruce unfolding like a sycamore unbending after the winds have passed. “Only a few minutes left, now.”
Bruce goes. Alfred continues preparing.
The day Jason Todd comes home, it is noon on a Wednesday and he has a duffle bag with him. (In another universe, that bag is filled with far less savory things than a collection of knives, several paperbacks, and some clothing. But this is not that universe.)
There are still things to discuss. The Red Hood will not simply go away – the reasons for his creation are many, and there is necessary work that he does. There are also family hurts which still exist, though none that cannot be forgiven or clarified or talked out. Alfred, of course, will be there for this. He will not let them destroy each other, not here in this house, their home.
But these discussions are for another time.
For now, there is Bruce, folding his son into his arms with a face cracked like stone, the two of them rocking back and forth, curled into one inextricable embrace until they both begin to weep, near-silent. Two big men who are younger and smaller in their pain.
There is Dick, making promises he intends to keep this time, his arms around the neck of his very first sibling, his little wing. Holding tight, full of the devotion of an older brother, the kind he’s grown into, the kind he wears now like a medal.
And there is Tim Drake, meeting his hero, greeted by a Jason Todd who has been reminded of the time he wished so desperately for a little brother, a Jason Todd who has been reminded of the fact that Robin is a legacy, and they must all learn to love their legacies, in this family.
And there is Alfred, who has always given the Waynes everything he has to give. His hands open and bloodied, his conscience clean, his heart full, full, full. Jason Todd is home. Jason Todd is with his family. All of them are here together, safe and warm.
They exist in perfect conjuction, the two of them. A loving grandfather. A loved grandson.
And just for a moment, with the sun coming in through the windows of the sitting room, Gotham is almost a kind place.