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“Selina left,” they inform him as Alfred makes his way back to headquarters. Their faces are sombre, their voices low. They seem to communicate through glances and whispers, and their feet hardly make a sound as they shuffle across the floor.
It feels like a funeral. And in a way, it is.
“They didn’t stand a chance,” Barbara explains to him quietly in the small kitchenette, leaning on the till and watching Alfred as he prepares the tea. “That… thing… had Superman’s heat vision. It obliterated them on the spot. Nothing left but bones. So Selina, she decided she can’t take it any more and I can’t say I blame her, Alfred. Especially after what Bane…” She trails off. Her arms close around her slim frame as her gaze drops to the floor.
“Yes,” Alfred agrees softly. “It’s only understandable.”
“But you’re still angry at her, aren’t you,” Barbara says after a moment.
Alfred closes his eyes. “I will learn not to be, in time,” he whispers.
Barbara nods. She doesn’t say anything more. She’s always been a smart one, and uniquely observant to boot, and Alfred knows he doesn’t have to explain his own resentment to her even though she might not share it. Because the thing is, Miss Kyle has abandoned Bruce. Too many people have done that already, and Bruce has taken that upon his shoulders every single time, but for her to do that too, to drive yet another knife into his heart when she must know exactly how badly he needs her…
Yes, Alfred understands why she did it. If he’s honest, it was a long time coming. But he had hoped, and had wished desperately that this would be one blow spared, one heartbreak if not avoided, then at least delayed.
So yes, he is angry.
He thinks about his conversation with Master Damian in the cave, then, and wants to sigh. He still doesn’t know if he should tell Bruce about it. Especially now. It could be false hope, nothing but wishful thinking, and it will hurt either way, but…
But at this point maybe false hope is better than none.
“He hasn’t stepped outside the lab,” Barbara whispers. “Talk to him. He’ll need that.”
Alfred finds a smile for her. It’s weak and breakable just like the china he’s balancing on his tray, but she returns it nonetheless as though Alfred’s effort has made it easier for her to try.
The thought warms him up, eases some of the weariness in his bones. He nods at her.
“I’ll do my best,” he promises.
She sweeps a strand of her magnificent hair off her shoulder, a rare self-conscious gesture that for a moment reminds Alfred of the girl she used to be. “You always do,” she says with that same, fragile smile.
This makes Alfred want to put the tray down and hug her, if only briefly, but the impulse is easy enough to resist. Alfred’s had years of practice. He holds onto the tray and passes her without a word, and leaves her there in the silence of the kitchen, about to exchange the company of one tall figure cloaked in black for another.
Just like the others, Bruce hardly ever takes the suit off these days.
As Alfred makes his way quietly to the lab, he doesn’t expect much but silence, of the kind that brims with words which clog the windpipe and refuse to make room for anything else. Maybe there’ll be the furious clicking of the keyboard, or the static noise of police reports, all distractions that don’t work as distractions at all and only make more glaring that which they are meant to conceal. Alfred is fully prepared to fill that familiar oppressive void with his own voice, to talk and talk at Bruce until some of it sticks, just like he has done before, over and over across far too many years.
And he feels those years now, every single one of them, bearing down on him with every step that takes him closer to facing his son’s suffering.
That’s what he’s prepared for when he gently toes open the unlocked door to the lab.
What he finds, though, is much, much worse.
“… is gone,” he hears, and he stops himself just short of stepping in, suddenly unable to so much as breathe, let alone move. It’s Bruce’s voice, quiet, broken, and he seems to be talking to someone, only there is no reply. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you,” Bruce whispers bitterly, slumped in the chair with his back to the door, his spine bent and his head resting heavily in his hands. “You’ve never liked her. I never wanted to accept that you were jealous, but that was probably it, wasn’t it? Well, you can laugh now. She left. She says it’s because she doesn’t want to be part of a losing fight, but I think it’s mostly me she’s fed up with. I couldn’t protect her. I couldn’t protect those who died. She doesn’t believe in me anymore and the others shouldn’t either. Sometimes I think it’s only a matter of time before they, too…”
Alfred stays where he is, frozen. He’s afraid Bruce will hear the frantic thud of his heart in the spell of silence that follows, but no, his son is too absorbed in his own thoughts, and in the chalk-white face which grins at them both cruelly from the screen of the computer, no less terrible in the still newspaper picture than he’d been in life.
The horrible laughing monster who ruined the lives of millions for sport. The killer who shot Barbara and murdered Master Jason in cold blood. The one whose life and death started this hell.
The clown.
And Bruce, who spent a good portion of his life fighting him, is now talking to his picture.
“Harley wore your clothes again the other day,” he whispers after several too-painful seconds. The hurt in his voice makes Alfred’s heart bleed, and he still finds himself unable to move, now more than ever. Bruce laughs, broken and brittle. “I swear, my heart stopped when I saw her in that coat and hat. I know why she does it. She wants to keep you close. She wants to maintain some sort of connection. It’s been five years and she’s still grieving you, even though I know that she hates you too. Hates you and misses you, and God, it scares me how much I get that. Still, I wonder sometimes, when I see her in your coat, when I see that card necklace of hers, I think, it’s a statement. A statement of ownership. Like she wants to own your memory, like she wants to say, He was mine. Like she still isn’t ready to define herself on her own terms, without you, even though she’s doing just fine, or maybe that is just for show, for us to see and remember what she lost.” A pause, a deep inhale and exhale, Bruce’s shoulders dropping even lower in the chair. “She’s going to start a revolution in your name, you know,” he says softly. “She’s going to twist you into something she wanted you to be but could never get, and maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe it’d happen even without her. And I get all that. So why…” He covers his head with both arms, squeezes, sighs. “Why do I still have to fight the urge to tear your clothes off of her? Look at me now. Look what you’ve done. I see her in that coat and I want to yell at her, and I want to scream, You don’t deserve that, He doesn’t belong to you. I want to steal that coat and check if it still smells of you even though I know it won’t. I can’t even look in the mirror after that, and Clark saw, and I think Selina did too. Maybe that’s also why she left. Maybe she saw how I looked at Harley in your coat.”
He laughs again, low and terrible, and it ends on a sob, and Alfred hasn’t been this terrified in years.
“It’s been five years,” Bruce whispers, like he can hear Alfred’s thoughts from across the room. “Five years since I saw him punch a fist through your chest. Did you know this would happen? Did you know how it would end? You told me Clark would break. I didn’t want to believe you. He was the best of us, and even though I knew anyone could be corrupted I didn’t want to accept that he of all people could break first. But then you broke him. You pushed and pushed and finally you broke him so that he did what you could never get me to do. Are you happy now, J.? Are you laughing at us? Probably. If you could see the kind of legacy you left behind you’d laugh yourself right back to your grave. You knew exactly what would happen, didn’t you. That’s precisely what you wanted. That’s what you wanted every time you tried to make me kill you, too. And now you’ve corrupted the best one among us, and the world is a ruin, and I’m grasping at straws, and my son and lover both left me and I’m sitting here talking to a goddamn picture and trying not to yell at Harley for wearing your coat.”
Then there’s silence, much heavier than the kind Alfred was prepared for. He wonders if he should step in now. Clear his throat and bring Bruce his tea, pretend he hasn’t heard or seen anything, behave like he hasn’t just witnessed his son laying himself bare before the picture of his worst enemy.
He can’t. He doesn’t trust his own acting skills right now. It’s too big for him, too unexpected, too strange. Too heartbreaking.
He stays put, and waits, and tries not to think about how Bruce would never say any of it to him.
“Was it a warning for me?” Bruce asks the picture on the screen, sounding small, hurting, defeated. “Were you trying to teach me? If Clark of all people could fall, I can, too, is that it? Was it your way of showing me I need to watch my own back? As if I didn’t already. I’ve always known what I’m capable of. I’ve lived with the darkness all my life. You didn’t have to… You didn’t have to die to prove a point, J.
“But maybe you didn’t want to. Maybe it wasn’t some grand plan at all, maybe you were just bluffing, maybe you didn’t see that fist coming any more than I did. Maybe you expected me to stop him and would hate me for failing. If that prophecy is right, if you’re really about to come back one day, what… what will we even say to each other? I don’t even know what I want anymore. I can’t say with a clear conscience that I don’t want you to come back and that scares me, J. That scares the shit out of me.”
Another sob struggles out of Bruce’s throat. Alfred keeps himself very, very still, and blinks back tears when he hears Bruce beg of the screen, “Please. It’s been five years. Please, J.”
Slowly, very slowly, Alfred finally takes a step back. Then another. His eyes move from the hunched figure of his son, collapsed under the weight of his pain, up to the screen.
The Joker’s eyes seem to mock him as he quietly turns away from the door.