Chapter Text
Alfred knew from the first ring of the phone that something was wrong.
He stumbled on suddenly unsteady feet; the world reeling sideways as a strange sense of déjà vu crashed over him, crushing the air from his lungs and threatening to drop him to his knees. If it hadn’t happened before, he might have thought it was a heart attack, but Alfred knew what this was. This was the same sickening lurch he’d felt on the night Martha and Thomas died: a feeling like the proverbial rug had been pulled out from under his feet as the building blocks of the universe tumbled down around him. It was the feeling of reality shifting around him. Alfred had experienced a few moments like that before. Little flashes of premonition that made him wonder if Baroness Ortsey, that mad old witch in her cell under London, had done more to him than drugged his tea one time. But none of those brief glimpses could compare to what he’d felt that night: the debilitating swell of sickness that had opened up the pit of his stomach, bile choking his throat and chest as the harrowing, agonizing certainty that something foundational to his existence had gone horribly, irrevocably wrong washed over him. The same feeling he had now.
Something was wrong.
Something was very, very wrong.
And the phone just kept on ringing.
Please don’t be Gotham PD, he thought desperately as he leaned against the telephone table in the hallway and lifted the phone from the cradle with hands that shook. Please don’t have taken my boy from me, too…
“Wayne Manor,” he said, swallowing around the surge of bile that threatened to escape his throat. “Who, may I ask, is calling?”
“Alfred…”
Alfred sagged, his knees threatening to buckle with relief as he clutched the receiver to his ear with both hands like a lifeline. “Master Bruce.”
“Alfred,” the younger man repeated, and this time, Alfred heard the fragility behind it. The smallness. He hadn’t heard Bruce sound like that since he was a child.
“What is it? What’s the matter?” he demanded, straightening on instinct. “Bruce?”
There was a heavy and leaden pause before the younger man spoke again, haltingly. “I need you to come.”
“It’s all right,” Alfred said, wishing fervently they’d upgraded all the phones in the house for the new cordless one they had in the kitchen, resentful of the wire tethering him in place when all he wanted to do was run and find his car keys to get to his boy. “Where…” He pressed his knuckles to his forehead, trying to think through the muddled haze still lingering in his head. “You were at that event tonight.”
Which was a bloody stupid thing to say because Bruce was always at an event, but his brain couldn’t find the word right now. Bright lights, colorful music, clowns in face paint—fucking, what was it called?!
“The circus,” Bruce said, filling in the blank for him. “On Amusement Mile.”
“Right, yes,” Alfred agreed, remembering now. One of Wayne Enterprises’ business partners was trying to be quirky and unique by taking them to the circus instead of hosting a gala. Clearly, something hadn’t gone to plan. “I’ll be there,” he said, still trying to get his heart rate down. “Just… whatever it is. I’ll be there.”
“Can you…” Bruce faltered. He drew in a shuddering breath, the sound harsh over the line. “Do we still have my old coat? The, the yellow winter one?”
Alfred blinked. He knew the one Bruce meant, but Bruce hadn’t worn a coat like that since he’d been… “The one you wore when you were twelve?”
“Yes, or anything we have that might be small enough? They’re taking all of his things as evidence, and he looks… He looks so cold, Alfred.”
“Who, Master Bruce? Who’s cold?”
“The boy,” Bruce replied, sounding like he’d turned his face away from the receiver to look at something. “They’ve just left him sitting there. In the cold…”
“What boy?” Alfred pressed, wondering if Bruce was hallucinating. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d been sprayed or injected with something that made him see things or relive his parents’ murder. That might explain why Bruce sounded like he’d been poleaxed. He tried again. “What boy, Master Bruce?”
“Richard… I think they said his name was Richard. His… He… Just come, Alfred. Please…”
And then the line buzzed and went dead. Alfred stared blankly ahead, listening to the dead tone for several seconds before returning the phone to the cradle. The action made him realize his hands were still shaking, so he forced himself to breathe until the cocktail of adrenaline and panic still fizzing in his veins stopped. Only then did Alfred about turn, marching with purpose toward the attic where he knew they’d kept several of Bruce’s old things. Things Alfred couldn’t bear to part with. The world still didn’t feel right. It felt wobbly around the edges, as if it were still trying to decide what shape it wanted to be. But Bruce was alive, and that was all that mattered—the only thing that mattered. Alive, and asking him to bring a coat for a small boy left out in the cold. Alfred could do that. Whatever else had gone wrong tonight, Alfred could do that.
After all, he’d done it before.
*
“And you didn’t see anything else?” Commissioner Gordon asked as Alfred drew level, holding back just enough not to intrude.
Bruce half turned to acknowledge his arrival, then turned back to Gordon, shaking his head. “No, I’m sorry. It was all so fast. One minute, they were in the air. The next…”
“Yeah,” Gordon murmured gruffly, sparing a glance over his shoulder. “The next.”
Alfred followed his line of sight, and he felt his stomach drop.
Two bodies lay crumpled together in the center of the ring, their limbs contorted at inhuman angles.
There was an awful lot of blood.
Another crime scene swam to the forefront of Alfred's mind. It was only the red and green sequins of their colorful attire, twinkling in the light, that kept his brain from imprinting Martha and Thomas’s faces over their youthful, dark-haired features. His gaze swept over the rest of the desolate circus tent before being drawn inexorably upward to where a singular trapeze bar was still swinging gently in the wind. Another wire hung empty beside it, the lines lopsided and the bar nowhere to be seen—though Alfred suspected if he looked more closely at the gruesome tableau in front of him, he’d find it.
He hoped it had been quick for them. He hoped it’d been over in an instant. A broken neck was preferable to bleeding out in a dark alleyway. It had to be.
“Well, thank you for your time, Mister Wayne,” Gordon said, drawing Alfred’s gaze toward him again. The other man caught his eye, acknowledging him with a grim nod before turning back to Bruce and adding almost apologetically, “I appreciate you sticking around. I know this can’t have been easy.”
“No, it’s all right.” Bruce held his hand up, offering a wobbly smile. Alfred wasn’t entirely sure it was fake. “I understand. Our group had the clearest view. I’m just sorry I couldn’t be of more help.”
Gordon waved him off. “You’ve been more help than anyone else I’ve spoken to tonight. The only other person who said they thought they saw a man running away was the boy. But even that was like pulling teeth. Poor kid.”
“Can… can I ask…” Bruce began, haltingly. “What’s going to happen to him?”
He nodded off toward the bleachers at the side, and Alfred did a double-take. The boy was dressed in the same red and green costume; his expression blank as dark hair fell into his too-young face. He was so still and motionless, Alfred hadn’t even noticed him. He glanced between the boy and the figures on the ground and squeezed his eyes shut in realization.
Oh, you poor little thing, he thought.
Christ, no wonder Bruce had sounded gutted on the phone. No wonder he’d been so fixated on the coat, too. The boy’s clothes might not be splattered in blood and brain matter, but the police officers had left him with nothing save the attire he was wearing. Not even a foil emergency blanket to cover his bare shoulders. At least Gordon had given Bruce his coat, once upon a time. At least someone had thought to be kind.
Clearly, the same kindness hadn’t been extended to this poor lad.
Gordon turned, following his gaze, a dark scowl crossing his features. “Oh, for the love of—” Gordon stopped himself from saying whatever profanity had been about to leave his lips and dragged a weary hand over his face, his gaze turning upward like a man praying for patience. “Sorry. Someone’s supposed to be taking care of him. I swear, all that sensitivity training just goes to waste.” He sighed, patting himself down almost absently until a cigarette materialized from one of his many pockets. “Child services are on their way,” he said, pausing to light his cigarette before exhaling smoke over his shoulder. “There’s no one else to take him while we’re questioning everyone, and from what I’ve gleaned so far, there’s no other blood relative in the circus to claim him. If I had to guess…” He shook his head remorsefully, pushing his glasses up in a weary gesture as they slid down his nose. “If I had to guess, he’ll go into the system. God help him.”
“What does blood have to do with anything?” Bruce demanded. “Surely someone else in the circus has guardianship?”
“We spoke to the owner, Haly. Near as I can tell, it’s all unofficial. The boy’s got an endless supply of people he calls aunt and uncle, but not a single one with legal guardianship. They can apply for custody, but given the circumstances…” Gordon trailed off, shaking his head again. “It seems unlikely.”
“Poor mite,” Alfred said quietly. A cold gust of wind whipped through the rippling fabric of the big top tent again, and he shook himself, remembering the coat in his hand. He held it forward. “Master Bruce…”
“Oh, yes. Thank you, Alfred.” Bruce took it, clutching the coat between white-knuckled fingers, then turned back to Gordon, his expression almost pleading. “I um. I don’t know if this is allowed, but I saw the police taking everything out of their caravan. Would it be okay if…” He held the yellow coat up hopefully.
Even from here, Alfred could tell it would be too big on the boy. He was so slight it would drown him, and Bruce hadn’t precisely been a robust child, but it would be better than nothing. Gordon stared at the coat, his grim expression melting into one of such gentle sadness it had no place on the face of a man who routinely stared into the underbelly of Gotham and somehow still hadn’t gone mad. His gaze flicked up to Bruce’s face, eyes softening even further, and Alfred wondered if he, too, was remembering a little boy swamped in a borrowed coat much too big for him.
“It’s not normally allowed.” He glanced over his shoulder at the boy, then back to Bruce before scanning the surrounding vicinity as he gestured furtively with the hand holding the cigarette. “But I think we can make an exception. If you’re quick…”
“Thank you,” Bruce said, slipping under the crime scene tape as Gordon held it up for him. Alfred followed.
“Master Bruce,” he tried, reaching out to brush his fingertips against the sleeve of Bruce’s coat. “Are you—”
Bruce didn’t shake him off, but he didn’t stop moving either. “I’m fine, Alfred,” he replied curtly, without looking at him. He seemed to shake himself, then added, “I’ll be fine. I just need to do this.”
The boy didn’t so much as twitch as they drew close, his eyes glassy and unseeing. Disassociating, most likely, Alfred realized. But they focused on Bruce readily enough when the younger man crouched in front of him.
“Hello,” Bruce ventured, more gentle than Alfred had ever heard him. “It’s Richard, isn’t it?” The boy stared at him mutely, then nodded. “Hi, Richard. I’m Bruce, and this is Alfred.” He gestured over his shoulder to Alfred, who favored the boy with a small smile. “I, um,” Bruce began again, uncharacteristically unsure of himself as he looked down at the coat in his hands—a far cry from the enigmatic, carefree playboy persona he’d donned at the start of the night. “I thought you might need this. It’s cold out here, this close to the sea at night.”
The boy, Richard, stared numbly at the coat being offered to him. When he looked up, his face was haunted and gaunt with grief. “Are you here to take me away?”
It was asked so softly, so quietly, that Alfred barely heard it.
His heart threatened to shatter into a million pieces, anyway.
Bruce cleared his throat. “Uh, no, that’s not why I’m here. I just saw what happened and thought you looked… cold.”
Richard’s eyes unfocused again, staring just left of Bruce’s shoulder. “Thank you,” he said, still just as quiet. He took the coat from Bruce’s hands but made no move to put it on. A clatter behind them made them all jump, and Alfred turned to find the coroner and his assistants arriving with gurneys. He caught Bruce’s eye just in time to see him wince. It was too late to block the boy’s view entirely, but Alfred tried anyway, stepping closer to Bruce’s side.
The lad might have witnessed his parents plummeting to their deaths, but he didn’t have to watch the indignity of them being loaded into body bags.
In front of him, Bruce squared his shoulders, and Alfred had a horrible suspicion about what was about to happen next. “Richard, I spoke to Commissioner Gordon about what happened. He said you thought you saw a man running away…”
“Master Bruce,” Alfred hissed warningly. Now was not the time for Batman to make an appearance.
True to form, Bruce ignored him, but the boy did not. His gaze skittered up to meet Alfred’s, his expression flickering through a range of unreadable emotions before he said, “You’re not American.”
Alfred gave a soft huff of laughter. He supposed it made sense that the boy would latch onto that. Anything was better than the situation going on around them. “No, I’m not,” he agreed, favoring the boy with another smile that he hoped was kindly. “I moved here from England a very long time ago. More fool me.”
He didn’t mean it, but that didn’t keep Bruce from nudging his elbow dangerously close to Alfred’s trick knee. “Alfie.”
“What?” Alfred asked, affecting an air of faux affront. “We’re in Gotham. The weather’s cold, and you can’t get a decent cup of tea for four thousand miles. At least in London, you could get a decent brew.”
Before it became a nuclear fallout zone, Alfred amended to himself.
Bruce shook his head, but Alfred caught the faintest flicker of amusement that crossed Richard’s face. “What about you?” Alfred asked. “Where are you from?”
The smile dimmed on Richard’s face instantly, his gaze seeming to pass right through them again. After a too-long moment, he said. “Everywhere and nowhere.” Like he was reciting it from memory, like it was something he’d heard his parents say: clever and witty—or at least it would have been, if it hadn’t sounded like it had carved the heart out of him to say it.
“Richard,” Bruce tried again, even gentler than before, “the man you thought you saw…”
The boy’s gaze snapped back to Bruce with a sudden, sharp intensity: hard and angry. The coat, which had still been grasped loosely in his hands, was thrown onto the bench as he folded his arms over his tiny chest. “I didn’t think I saw someone. I know I saw him.” He glowered hard between Alfred and Bruce as though daring them to challenge him.
Bruce held up a placating hand. “All right, the man you saw. Can you tell me what he looked like?”
Richard continued to glower at him; his blue-eyed gaze suddenly narrowed with suspicion. “You’re not police,” he said, too sharp and astute for his age. “I don’t have to tell you anything.”
Bruce held his hands up placatingly. “No. No, we’re not with the police. We’re not with anyone. But I saw someone too. I saw a man running from the edge of the ring. A man in a brown fedora hat. I just wanted to know if it was the same man.”
“Why?”
Bruce blinked at the question, taken aback by it. “Because I want to help,” he answered honestly.
Richard eyed him warily, gnawing on his bottom lip until Alfred feared it might split. He glanced up at Alfred, then back to Bruce. “You’re really not with the police?” Both men shook their heads. “You promise?” he asked, his expression breaking into something so painfully innocent and trusting it hurt to look at, like staring directly into the sun.
Bruce held up a hand, drawing a cross over his heart with the other. “I promise.”
A childish promise for a childish question, but earnestly sincere in equal measure.
The boy leaned forward, staring into Bruce’s unflinching gaze as though searching for something. Whatever he saw must have been good enough because he gave a curt little nod, drew back, and closed his eyes. “I saw a man in a gray trench coat,” he recited, brows furrowing together in thought. “Brown hat, like you said. Brown leather shoes. All scuffed on the sides. He was tall, not like you. Bit shorter. Fat and shaped like a pear.” He rattled off a list of features. White skin. Brown hair. Broken nose. A scar on the left side of his face. Tattoos across his knuckles. One finger missing, so the tattoos spelled “love and hat” instead of “love and hate.” An impressive amount of recall for a child, let alone a traumatized one.
“He talked funny, too,” Richard added, finally opening his eyes. “Real fast, like the people in the little city. Not like you.” He nodded at Alfred. “You talk like him.”
“You heard him? Tonight, at the show?” Bruce asked, ignoring the comment about his manner of speech.
People had been remarking on Brucie Wayne’s muddled transatlantic accent since he was probably about Richard’s age. It was an affectation that worked well for him, considering the guttural growl Batman used to make criminals piss themselves. No one would ever guess the two men were the same from the way they spoke.
Richard shook his head. “No. I’ve seen him hanging around before. He’d come to the circus while we were rehearsing. I heard him tell Lyra—that’s the snake dancer—that he was in a gang like it was some big cool secret. He’d hang around the costume caravan. It made all the chorus girls nervous. I told on him, but…” His shoulders sagged, body caving inward in defeat. “No one listened…”
I told on him, Alfred thought, feeling his heart ache again. Such a stark reminder of how young the boy truly was. He couldn’t be over ten. If that. Christ, what a tragedy. What a broken, wretched world.
“Did you tell Commissioner Gordon any of this?” Bruce asked.
Richard bit his lip again, then lowered his gaze to the ground, shoulders hunching inward even further. When he spoke, his voice was a barely audible whisper. “Uncle Haly told me not to. He said the police are bad…”
Bruce and Alfred shared a look.
Alfred had to admit, it was probably wise not to confide so closely in Gotham’s police force. Gordon might be doing his best to clean things up, but everyone knew Gotham PD was essentially an extension of the mob, and based on the physical description alone, the man sounded like every two-bit Gothamite gangster to ever crawl out of the underbelly of the city. Given his ethnicity and what Richard had said about his fast-flowing speech and the ‘little city,’ likely from the Little Italy district. One of Maroni’s men, perhaps? Or Carmine Falcone—though Alfred struggled to imagine the latter engaging in petty shakedowns on traveling circuses. Which it undoubtedly would be. Amusement Mile was too close to several gang territories not to end up paying into a protection racket, though if this was about missed protection money, then why kill two acrobats in front of an audience? Arson was the preferred modus operandi for sending such messages to those who didn’t pay their dues. Why would this time be any different?
Unless this wasn’t just about protection money but about something else as well. Something much more sinister.
Had the boy’s parents witnessed something they shouldn’t have? More vitally, had Richard seen something that might now, at this very moment, be putting his life in danger?
Alfred shared another look with Bruce, who seemed to have come to the same conclusion. His jaw was so tense Alfred imagined he could hear his teeth grinding. Bruce might have only been considering getting involved before, but it was now a downright certainty that Batman would be prowling through Little Italy later on. Heads would roll—though hopefully only metaphorically. Brain matter was always such a bother to get out of the cape.
“Why…” Richard asked in a small, wavering voice, pulling Alfred out of his thoughts.
“Why what?” Bruce asked.
Richard tilted his head down to the side and drew in a shuddering breath before risking a glance at Bruce again. “If you’re not with the police, why do you care?”
Bruce was silent for several moments, staring at the ground. After a while, he said, “My parents were killed by a man in a gang, too.” Richard started, and a muscle in Bruce’s jaw twitched before he managed to turn it into a rueful smile. “I tried to tell the police what I saw, but no one listened. They blamed it on someone else. A man who wasn’t there. They never caught the man who really did it.”
“Oh.” It was such a soft utterance, but so raw with emotion. The boy reached out tentatively and hooked his tiny pinky finger around Bruce’s much larger one. “I’m sorry.”
Don’t cry, Alfred thought, blinking rapidly up at the darkness of the tent. Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t fucking cry.
Bruce inclined his head, looking down at their joined hands before covering Richard’s much smaller one with both of his own. “I’m sorry, too.”
A fragile silence hung in the air. Richard looked ready to ask another question, then abruptly froze, clamping his jaw shut. Alfred had just enough time to wonder what might cause such a reaction when he heard the gentle tread of footsteps coming up behind them. “Mister Wayne?”
Alfred turned to find Commissioner Gordon and a tall, slender woman hovering behind him. Alfred scanned quick eyes over her. Everything from the cheap cut of her blazer and the severe bun in her hair, right down to the clipboard in her hand, screamed social services, and Alfred felt an irrational desire to step in front of Richard and fend her off. If their suspicions were correct, there was no way these people could protect him. Hell, some of them might even try to do him harm. But what were they supposed to do? Just run off with him and hide him in the cave?
The boy isn’t yours, he chided himself, forcing the irrational impulse down. You can’t do anything for him.
But knowing that didn’t make it any easier to step aside. Nor did the way Richard leaned closer to Bruce as the woman stepped forward, looming over him with her hands on her knees as she spoke to him with an exaggerated, slow cheerfulness that had no place in a crime scene, let alone one so gruesome. Predictably, Richard clammed up. Gaze turned to the ground again—no sign of the astute, inquisitive boy who’d been talking to them mere moments before.
When it was time to go, the boy spared one last look back at Bruce. He offered a small, fragile smile. “Thank you,” he said, “for listening.”
“Of course,” Bruce said just as quietly, returning the smile with a sad one of his own.
Two orphans, bound by the same tragic fate of watching their parents die. Except where Bruce had been able to return to the familiarity of his own home—however irrevocably altered it might be—here was Richard being dragged away from the only one he’d ever known. It wasn’t fair…
The universe wobbled.
Or perhaps it was merely Alfred’s old and aching heart.
Abruptly, he remembered the coat sitting neglected on the bench. “Excuse me!” he called out, darting after the group before they could go much further. The boy turned back to face him, and Alfred flourished the yellow coat, fastening it around Richard’s narrow shoulders like a cape. “There. That’s better,” he said, fussing with the line of the collar. “Best to keep warm, Master Richard. We don’t want you catching cold.”
The boy’s slender fingers reached up to touch the top button at his throat, then looked down at himself. Alfred was forced to admit it was a garish ensemble: the green, the red, and the yellow. It made him look like a stoplight. But it would keep him warm, at least until someone found him better clothes.
Richard looked back up at him, an entire world of earth-shattering pain reflected in the wet shine of his blue eyes. And then he smiled, the expression so hauntingly sad Alfred knew he’d never be able to forget it. “Thank you,” he whispered, then turned away and walked into the night.