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Butlers tend, they do not care and yet Alfred cares so damn much about the poor, grief filled child, he is left in the spot of someone parental. Both mentally and physically. Martha and Thomas Wayne are gone and eight year old Bruce, his charge, is wholly and completely in his seemingly well-prepared hands.
And it’s all a complete sham. Yes, he’d watched over Bruce dozens of times beforehand, even escorted the newborn and his family home from the hospital when he was good and ready to be welcomed to the world beyond sterile walls.
This, this horrid, horrid situation is not the same. Martha and Thomas are not in route home or due back at all, and Bruce is grieving. Hard. Something to be expected, the poor boy was traumatized.
His parents murdered right before his young doe eyes - thousands of hungry, conniving, beastly reporters trying to bust down the manor’s gates just for a glance of mourn.
Alfred knew how to handle a great many things, it was his duty. It had been his way of life for so long, the only way, and still he’s more at hand with a gun grasped between his mitts than he is soothing a despondent child who is certain the world had effectively ended.
Bruce is his charge, his duty, and Alfred has no other choice; not that he’d leave if he even had a chance. He remembers very clearly when the day came that Thomas had sat him down with a bottle of whiskey - not long after Bruce was born actually - asking if in the event of their untimely deaths he would take not only their lives work until Bruce was ready, but their very world itself: Bruce.
Alfred had agreed maybe too eagerly for a man with his inexperience but he knew the same thing then he knew now. He would do what no man should for the Wayne’s, including taking Bruce Wayne in as his very own.
The…event had given Bruce quite the aversion to touch. This Alfred understands, knowing well after a tough skirmish, men often knew no more than something harsh if their world had already been swept out from under their feet.
An eight year old boy should not know this. Should not hold such rage and sorrow in his eyes. Breathe air as if stuck in high altitude. Bruce Wayne, a child, even one born and bred in Gotham should know no such woes.
The word, the meaning, should, means nothing because Bruce has endured in the most disheartening way and he is floundering. There is no night without torrid dreams where the child screams as if drowning, water and tears in his lungs, body tangled in the wave of sheets trying and succeeding in their attempt to strangle him.
There is no morning where Bruce eat’s more than a fourth of his plate and that is a victory in itself since Alfred is sure at times the boy’s stomach is eating him alive. The grumbles at first weren’t easily hidden but the more Bruce pulls, and pulls back on the world around him, it seems as if his body has gotten used to it.
Alfred knows hate better than most, having met it in many men that had come across his path. Feeling it in the curves of their hands as they shook in greeting, Thomas and Martha Wayne showed no such temper - and Master Bruce comes close in the way his fist ball at his sides but Alfred’s well-tuned touch, gaze, and introspection can tell it is not all consuming.
Bruce has no malice and Alfred is grateful for nothing more. He doesn’t think he could watch the boy who had taken his very first steps in the world to come towards him dusting the mantle turn into the faces of contract killers whose hands he shook and then effectively killed.
There is still anger but Alfred vows he will not allow anything worse to come from it.
Alfred is not a religious man, truly unknowing of what was beyond all this. He has trouble believing if there is such a thing as a higher power they would make and let his charge suffer this way.
If there was, they’d know, they’d realize their mistake once he finally met them. He’d shout and he’d ridicule, demand what in the hell they were thinking putting such responsibilities on the shoulders of one too small to carry them.
If there was a higher power, it was in their best intention to give him all the time he could on this earth to covet that boy and rectify their mistake.
The manor although entirely the same since the Wayne’s passing is more fitting now that they're gone.
It’s a despondent place with gothic architecture that really sells the grave situation in which the last of the Wayne’s is living.
Alfred wonders what he can do to make things better, something beyond the macabre, but his efforts are always shut down by piercing green eyes.
Dory seems to find it the most concerning that Bruce won’t say a word. Hasn’t said one since the tragedy at all. The press found it intriguing too.
Bruce didn’t utter a word in response to the offered condolences at the funeral, leaning heavily back against Alfred’s front as if he could sink into him which the butler hadn’t minded at all.
If it had been appropriate he’d have started swinging on the damn vultures who tried to interrogate the boy whilst his parents were being put in the very ground before them.
Alfred can admit he misses the sound of the boys laughter and light tone when asking questions or making conversation but he can’t pry those things back to the surface like many have tried.
Not when he knows it very may well destroy the foundation of trust between them overall.
Alfred with great care sets to work on upping the manor’s security. Letting off attendants no longer needed, installing more locks and a better security camera for the front door and gate.
Ever since the Wayne's passing and the media’s sudden obsession with “The Prince of Gotham.” The name is enough Alfred nearly grinds his teeth, but the perverted, malicious interest this city had set forth was distressing. Unnerving.
Of course Bruce himself wasn’t privy to the threats, not explicitly. Alfred is careful to discard the…fan mail but he hadn’t been able to stop the shouts of reporters and degenerates alike when it was absolutely necessary to leave the manor.
It was hard to gauge how Bruce felt about it, deathly silent and still, face set in stone at every occurrence.
Still it is better to be safe than sorry.
For all the precautions in place, there are always those determined enough to overrun them.
Alfred’s preparing dinner when he hears Dory scream and something clatter. There’s a flurry of pounding footsteps, four if Alfred’s not mistaken, and something in his heart grows cold.
Master Bruce was in his room taking a nap and there were people in the house.
It doesn’t take a second for him to start to dial the authorities, not taking the time to answer any questions; merely leaving the phone on so they would get the memo to arrive as he went to eliminate the threat.
There’s a grating sound filling his ears as Dory cries before being muffled by what Alfred can only assume is tape.
In a matter of seconds before he can even fully process just what he’s doing, he’s aiming for the bastards ribs with a jab of his elbow.
Hand moving to the back of the bastards head before slamming his skull into the ground below, painting the carpet in a metallic crimson and incapacitating the first threat.
There’s very little remorse as he continues on, leaving Dory half bound and terrified on the floor. She was whole and for all he knew these people were here for his young charge not anything else.
Alfred misses the worried and pitying glance the woman takes at his leg, in his adrenaline he doesn’t notice it at all.
He would not let them take Bruce or anything worse. He couldn't. He promised.
Bruce knows his guardians steps. Confident and counterintuitive, light and soft. Amassing attention with every single step he took, and Bruce - even while exhausted, having been unable to sleep knows it’s not Alfred coming down the hall.
These are quick and frantic, weighted. His mind echoes with the the splashing of nonexistent water, his parents lifeless bodies flashing before his eyes at the echo.
Bruce nearly freezes, nearly falls stock still as he did then when they were taken, until something makes him leap.
Sheer terror really as Bruce dives off his bed in a clatter, it doesn’t matter that he’s given his position away because they were after him anyway and his mind is too jumbled with death to care.
The door breaks with a crack, gunfire in the young boy's mind as he scrambled to get anywhere. Just away, but he’s too small, too weak as an arm wraps around his middle, effectively pulling him back towards a broad chest.
A hand tries and fails to cover his growling and seething mouth as his scrawny limbs thrash. Teeth latching on skin that leads to a scream deafening his left ear.
Before he can struggle any harder his body is thrown down, his shoulder snapping out under his weight. Temple splintering against the ground spewing blood.
“You little brat,” his assaulter seethes, Bruce ignoring it as he struggles to breathe. Lungs unable to expand with the weight of the man on his back.
“It’s not worth struggling, kid. No one’s going to save you. My friends already took care of that crotchety old lady who takes all your calls and that posh butler of yours,”
The news about Dory doesn’t surprise Bruce much if at all, she was older and if this man could hold him down they could hold her down.
But Alfred? No.
Bruce refuses to believe it, he can’t. Alfred was strong, Alfred was all he had left. Bruce, as much as he was scared to admit it in fear of losing him too, loved Alfred.
The man shouldn’t have mentioned the Wayne’s dutiful butler, because for the first time since the death of his parents Bruce speaks, Bruce screams:
“Alfred!”
Alfred hears it the second his fist makes contact, effectively sending the third assailant down beside the second.
Bruce. Screaming. Calling him.
His vision blurs red and he runs, sprints, his bad leg threatening to give out in his haste. The pain is more prevalent now after the second man had managed to slam out a clumsy kick.
The sight he walks in on is horrendous, blood sprayed, his child wan in pain. His child being restrained with a dirty hand over his mouth.
Alfred lurches, his boot making contact with the bastards head effectively throwing him off the last of the Wayne’s.
He has half a mind to throw the bastard out the window until he realizes this is Bruce’s bedroom and the boy had already seen far too much carnage for him to kill this fiend in front of him.
Grabbing the filth by the collar, Alfred all but drags him out into the hallway where the police were already waiting.
Thankfully Officer Gordon was in the charge to take things from there.
The doctors insist Bruce stay the night after his shoulder is pushed back into place and a cast is wrapped around his arm.
His temple has been pieced back together with butterfly bandages and ice is held against his pounding concussion.
Alfred hadn’t accepted any help in favor of holding the boy close, merely left with bruises and bloody knuckles catching on the dark hair on the boy's head as he tangled his hand through his nape.
Bruce leant heavily against his chest, his one free hand fisted into his vest as if he’d vanish the moment he let go.
“I have you dear boy, I have you,” he assures into the crown of his head, knowing the image of the boy pressed down on the ground in a pool of his own blood would stick in his head for some time.
Maybe not more than the image of Bruce wrapped in Gordon’s coat with his parents blood staining his shirt. Alfred really doesn't know.
“Alfred,” Bruce whispers, finally speaking again. Face pressing hard into his sternum, enough Alfred worries the pressure will reopen his wounds.
“I’m here,”
Bruce protests only because of his leg, not because he doesn’t want to be held. Alfred ignores this, Bruce needn’t worry about his hang-ups, not after this.
The boy is slight in his arms as he carries him up the driveway and through the front door.
Dory watches the scene nervously, hands wringing as she held the door open for them, not knowing what to say.
Alfred does.
“I’ll start preparing lunch,”