Work Text:
“Alfred, I’m bored,” Bruce said, kicking his heels against the rungs of the stool he was currently perched on. “There’s nothing to do.”
Alfred, who was currently elbow deep in a chicken he was preparing to roast, felt a certain sense of despair rise in him. He never liked to be irritated with the boy. Bruce was fractious, and easily frustrated. He had been used to seek Alfred out for comfort, but now he only sought him out for complaint. Bruce’s grief was often overwhelming, and he swung between fits of boredom, sobbing, and exhausted, helpless fury with the regularity of a metronome. Alfred was now solely responsible for the upkeep of both an enormous house and a small and troubled child, and he was finding one a more difficult task than the other.
“Perhaps a club at school, Master Bruce,” Alfred said, removing his hands from the chicken’s ribcage.
“I already tried the clubs. They’re all stupid, and I hate them.” He kicked the kitchen island again, rattling the dishes. Alfred glared reprovingly at him. Bruce kicked again. “Why do I have to go to school, anyway. Why can’t I just stay here with you?”
“All of the clubs. Really?”
Bruce glared down at the wooden counter. “I’m no good at chess, and I don’t like to run, and art is stupid and boring. And I’m not going to sit in a room and watch movies after school.” Unspoken, Alfred knew, was that Bruce had very little patience for the other children, and they even less for him. Gotham Academy was a fine school, but its collection of snobbish Gotham royalty was not treating Bruce particularly well.
“It’s important for you to meet other children, Master Bruce, and besides, you know as well as I do you’re not built for idleness. You’d be tremendously bored at home with me. Unless you’d like to help me wash all the dishes, and dust the furniture, and clean the windows?”
“Blech!” Bruce said, as Alfred had known he would. “No thank you.”
“Why not try a sport?”
“I’m too young for all the teams,” Bruce said. “They don’t start until seventh grade, and I’m only in fourth. And besides I think running around with a ball is stupid. And all the boys who play sports hate me, anyway.”
“There are other types of sports you could try,” Alfred says. “You could learn fencing, or horseback riding, or tennis.” Though none of those would solve the problem of Bruce’s terrible rages and his inability to get along with the other children, which a team environment might help temper. “Or perhaps you might like to go to the library. I often find I discover new ideas in there.”
Bruce looked dubious, but he clambered down from the stool. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll try it.” Because despite all of his emotional turmoil, he still trusted Alfred, and always had.
Alfred finished scrubbing his hands of chicken juice and dried them on a towel. “I’ll come in in an hour or so, and check on your progress. And perhaps you might like some tea then.”
Bruce grinned, his little-boy gap-tooth grin always at odds with the piercing seriousness of those eyes. “Well, perhaps I might.”
Alfred put the chicken in the oven, and pulled out the rolls that had finished their second rise, and set some green beans to marinate. Nothing fancy tonight, since it was just the two of them, and anyway Bruce was becoming something of a picky eater, which he had never been before. Or perhaps it was less that he was picky, and more that he simply did not like to eat. But he could usually be tempted with chicken, if it was made the way he liked, and he had not yet turned up his nose at green beans.
Alfred knew he was not qualified to raise any child, still less one who had been deeply sensitive even before the grief. But there was no one else. The Waynes had, in the reckless fashion of young couples, left no provisions for their son in the event of their demise. Bruce had an uncle and aunt, Kate’s parents, whom he liked. But he refused to leave the manor, which had led to a shrieking, horrible scene when they had arrived to take him to their New York apartment. In desperation they had asked Alfred if he could watch the boy, with payment coming out of the estate. And Alfred, watching Bruce hyperventilate on the snowy paving stones and trying with no success to coax him back into the house, had agreed.
So he cooked chicken and green beans, and suggested hobbies for Bruce, and drove him to school, and made him warm milk after his inevitable nightmares. The nightmares worried him less than they probably should have; he did, after all, have his own experience with nightmares. They would ease, with time.
When he did bring in a tray of tea and biscuits, it was to find Bruce perched on one of the winged armchairs in the cavernous library. The library had mostly been his father’s domain, and most of the books would be too old for him, but Alfred had thought it might be nice for him to explore something on his own, rather than have Alfred rack his brains for ready-made activities that would only fail. And sure enough, Bruce was poking with deep interest at one of his father’s anatomical models, a finely-wrought little man who came with removable organs. Bruce had removed all of them and arranged them in a little grid on the table, the way Alfred did with the giblets.
“Alfred, I’ve found a hobby!” he said, with an excitement Alfred had not heard in his voice in months. “I would like to learn anatomy.”
Alfred had sudden, horrible visions of eviscerated frogs on the kitchen counters. “Oh god,” he said, involuntarily. “Well.” He tried to rally. “That does sound interesting. Perhaps you could help me butcher the chicken next time. In the meantime, perhaps you might find chemistry equally stimulating?” Bruce might make just as much of a mess playing with retorts and beakers, but at least then he wouldn’t be exposed to quite so much blood. “Your father won a chemistry prize, I believe, in university, and there might be some of his old equipment in the attic.”
“Hm,” Bruce said, narrowing his eyes. He knew when he was being redirected. But it seemed that this was one of the times he would allow it.
“Master Bruce, might you emerge from your glassware any time soon and eat something?” Alfred said.
Bruce grumbled something inaudible and withdrew his head from the fume hood. This took some doing, as he had managed to contort his not inconsiderable bulk so that he was almost entirely inside the hood. Alfred had always thought the purpose of a fume hood was to keep your head out of it, but Bruce was going to do what Bruce wanted to do. He still had the suit on. It had been nearly five hours since patrol.
“I’m afraid I couldn’t quite make that out,” Alfred said, a little tartly.
“It’s in a delicate stage, Alfred,” Bruce said. “I’ll eat something in a bit.”
“That’s what you said three hours ago,” Alfred said. “Surely it can’t still be in the same delicate stage.”
“Well,” Bruce said, looking down at his gloves. “The delicateness is– that is–”
“You forgot,” Alfred said. Bruce had grown so much– he had made himself a man, and then, not satisfied with that, a legend– but in some ways he was still the same fractious child he had been at nine. “Get it to a place it’s not actively going to boil away and then come eat a sandwich. It’ll keep.”
“The sandwich will keep too,” Bruce said.
“Yes, but think of your example for the boys,” Alfred said, and Bruce muttered something dark and derogatory and stuck his head back into the vent. There arose rapid clinking sounds and a great whoosh, and then Bruce emerged again and went to the sink to wash his hands.
“You may very well grumble,” Alfred said, dishing out the sandwich. Chicken salad with cucumbers. “I know this is all my fault. You wanted to study anatomy.”
“I did study anatomy,” Bruce said.
“Yes, at school. You wanted to do it as a hobby, when you were small. I told you to try chemistry instead, because I didn’t want you eviscerating animals in my kitchen. And now here we are.”
“I don’t remember that.” Bruce wore the particular frown that Alfred knew meant he was trying to access a portion of his childhood that was barred to him. Much of Bruce’s childhood was like that, particularly the months immediately after his parents’ death.
“Well, that’s what I’m here for,” Alfred said, and pushed the sandwich towards him.
“Hm,” Bruce said, and took a bite.