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Bruce was curled up in his favorite library chair. He had a book open on his legs—To Kill a Mockingbird, for school—but he was staring out the window, watching the wind blow through mostly-bare trees and strip off a few more loosely stuck leaves. A single finger kept the novel open, absentmindedly running along the inked pages.
He was thinking of the book, but not really. He was thinking about crime and justice and how unfair the world was. It wasn’t hard to consider the perspective of a young child realizing suddenly how cruel the world could be because Bruce remembered his own moment quite well, clutching his mother’s body desperately.
He tried to keep reading, but his mind kept slipping away from him. All he could think about were solutions.
Because there had to be solutions, right? They couldn’t go on like this forever. And he wanted to be involved in them. There was a deep urge, clawing and scratching at his mind, his stomach, his heart. He needed to fix this all, to protect his city and make it as safe as his childhood innocence once made it seem.
He was startled by a throat clearing nearby. Alfred.
“Master Bruce, we will be going out today. Please find the shoes and coat I’ve laid out and meet me in the yard.”
Bruce squinted at him, but Alfred’s expression was as inscrutable to him as ever. A muscle twitched, and Bruce struggled to place whether that was the ghost of a smirk or a frown.
“I’m doing schoolwork, Alfred.” He indicated his book, though it was surely obvious that wasn’t where his gaze lay.
“And it will remain there for you in a few hours. I have something important to teach you.”
Alfred turned away promptly, confident Bruce would follow. The confidence might be irksome, but not misplaced. No homework could be better than time with Alfred. He left the book in his seat, turned upside down to mark his place, and rushed himself downstairs.
In the alcove by the back door he found his unused hiking boots set out. The strings were thick and ropey as he clumsily pulled them tight. The strapped-up boots pinched uncomfortably into his lower calf even before he stood up. The jacket Alfred set out was a sophisticated wool style in dark grey. Bruce shrugged it on, but left it unbuttoned. Sometimes he liked to feel the bite of wind against his collarbones.
He stepped out into the morning reluctantly. What might’ve been a sunny day was dulled by the smog of Gotham stretching through the sky. The yard around him was mostly dead with the early snaps of oncoming winter, but faint sounds of wildlife echoed from the woods beyond. A small flock of robins chirped at each other in the outermost grove of trees, earnest to stubborn out the cold.
The door clicked open behind Bruce, and he turned to Alfred. The butler was dressed more casually than usual, disposing of his formal suit for hiking pants and boots. A camo green pack across his waist bulged with hidden supplies. It was such a startling shift that it took Bruce an extra moment to notice what Alfred was holding.
Bruce stepped back instinctively.
That was a shotgun. In Alfred’s hand.
His breath came faster. His eyesight blurred. A loud Bang! echoed through his mind, and he whimpered pathetically at the memory.
Vaguely, he heard Alfred mutter, “Oh, honestly Master Bruce,” but he was already too lost to care.
He came back to himself on the ground. The seat of his pants was damp from the frost-coated grass he’d collapsed into. Alfred kneeled in front of him, expression stern, but Bruce couldn’t care until he confirmed that the shotgun was far away, leaning against the siding of the house.
His hands were shaking where they fisted the fabric of his coat. Something was burning in him, a vicious mix of grief and humiliation as he sat there under his guardian’s pointed gaze.
“Master Bruce,” Alfred said. “I understand that this is difficult. But you are a man now.”
Even in the hazy aftermath of his panic, Bruce wanted to fight that. There was a snide part of him that wanted to ask ‘where the fuck was my bar mitzvah then?’ just to make Alfred flinch. He bit it back, because that wasn’t an argument he’d win.
If he was honest, he did feel more mature than his peers. Like there was a darkness in him that none of his privileged classmates could understand. Like something crawled into him that night in the alley, infecting him irreversibly.
“How could you,” he said instead, suddenly boiling with anger. Alfred knew and he still…
“What the fuck, Alfred.”
“Language, Master Bruce.” Alfred stood up crisply. He towered over Bruce now, intimidating in his military style.
Bruce scrambled up, ready to stand his ground. Even at his full height, he still only reached Alfred’s shoulders, far behind most boys his age. He lifted his chin stubbornly regardless, like the foolish kid he was.
Before he could say anything further, Alfred continued. His tone was clipped with his own frustration.
“It is your duty, Master Bruce, to conquer this phobia of yours. You must not shame the Wayne name with your hysterics.”
That made Bruce freeze. It was like ice water was poured over him, shocking his whole system.
He had blurry memories of his father speaking down to him, scolding him when he misbehaved. He’d said, “The Wayne name is a gift and it is a responsibility. You must act like it, son.”
And Alfred remembered them better. Alfred knew them long before Bruce was even born, so Alfred must have been right that this is what they would want.
(Even though that made no sense, because how could someone not see how evil guns were? Why would anyone ever wish for him to wield such a pointlessly destructive weapon?)
And Alfred wanted it personally, too. Standing there, he seemed so sure that Bruce needed this. The very thought of disappointing him further made Bruce shudder.
At the same time, even the thought of touching a gun felt like a betrayal. Of his parents. Of himself.
He kept cycling through the same pattern. Would he betray his parents more through weakness or by becoming a monster? It was hard to imagine anything in between. He knew there was something violent inside of him, an angry ball of destruction that he could not unleash.
But Alfred…
His eyes darted back to the gun. Even since Alfred set it aside, it was less than fifteen feet away. It was the closest he’d knowingly come to a firearm since that day.
He thought he’d done a decent enough job at hiding his fear over the years, but evidently not. Alfred must have noticed his flinch at movie gunfire or his faked illness the day his class was supposed to take a trip to the Gotham Police Department.
Was the shotgun in his house all this time? It was a violating thought, that Alfred could so easily hold the weapon that took his parents from him, that destroyed his whole life. He knew abstractly that Alfred was a soldier once, in the way child-him knew his father was a businessman but never cared to know what the business was. He’d thought about it, sure. He’d wondered if Alfred had ever taken a life. If he harbored guilt for it. But he pushed those thoughts away. They never mattered, because Alfred always felt safe. Even with his formal posture and carefully distant affectation, Bruce knew he cared.
Now Bruce felt torn. He wanted to trust Alfred that this was necessary, that Alfred would keep him safe. He also wanted to run inside and lock himself in his room to cry like a pathetic child.
But Alfred was right in many ways. Fourteen was much too old to still whimper at the very sight of a gun. Many of his peers went hunting with their fathers all the time and came back to Gotham Academy bragging about their big haul. He told himself that surely if little Johnny could do it so could he.
And Alfred was there to control him. He had to trust Alfred. He did trust Alfred, with his life. If things got bad, at least he was certain Alfred could take him out.
(With the gun that he hid because he didn’t understand or he didn’t care, two options that tore at Bruce's heart equally.)
He straightened, committed.
“What would you have me do?”
He tried to project confidence, but his voice shook through the formal words. Still, Alfred’s lips twitched with the ghost of a proud smile, and that was worth the lingering anxious tremble that riddled his body.
“Today,” Alfred explained. “We are going to get you comfortable with firearms, Master Bruce. And luckily for us, you own a lovely plot of forest to practice in.”
Bruce did not like the sound of that. He didn’t want to practice, he wanted to go back inside and finish his homework. He didn’t dare tell Alfred that.
“First,” Alfred continued, striding back toward his discarded shotgun, “I will show you the basic principles.”
He looked pointedly at Bruce as he wrapped his hand around the grip. Swiftly, Bruce’s mind flashed through every negative scenario. He imagined Alfred shooting Bruce, then shooting himself. He saw in his vision as Alfred lay sprawled in the dirt, blood pooling around him, as Bruce was once again helpless to save his most treasured person.
Bruce gulped but said nothing.
“This is a 12-gauge shotgun. It’s hardly my finest piece, but it is most appropriate for a first time hunter.” Bruce bit back an upset sound at the confirmation that Alfred had even more guns. How could you rang repeatedly in his head, but he didn’t dare repeat it aloud. “I’ve set up targets for your practice. If you’d follow me.”
Alfred stepped forward, moving confidently toward the line of trees. Bruce trailed after him meekly, careful not to drag his feet in the way Alfred disliked.
In the first clearing beyond the start of woods, they stopped. There were targets set up all around, pinned to trees or propped up like painting canvases. Some were round, like he associated with archery, but others depicted colorful animals. Bruce tried not to look too closely at those.
Did Alfred just have these lying around? No, that wouldn’t make much sense. He must have purchased them in advance. The idea that Alfred had been planning this rankled him. Did Alfred really see him as so badly in need of correcting?
He should have at least had the chance to argue his own case, that guns are vicious weapons with no purpose beyond destruction, and should not be tolerated by anyone. They should be feared. Anything less was illogical.
He didn’t say this though. He stood silently, watching Alfred closely.
He wanted to close his eyes, to pull himself away from this, but he also had a deep and pressing need to track every movement of that gun. Was it loaded? What if Alfred lost control? Bruce getting hurt he could accept, but what if Alfred hurt himself?
Bruce knew, with utter certainty, that he would not survive without Alfred. He’d sooner shoot himself in the head than see that day.
He tried to pretend it was something else, but it was hard when he was still staring at the wine-red barrel and it was right in front of him, tip pointed down at the grass a few feet away.
Bruce suppressed a flinch when Alfred stepped toward him. He was not afraid of Alfred, he tried to remind himself. He wasn’t sure it was still true.
Alfred seemed to notice even the minute jerk of Bruce’s hands. He sighed, looking more frustrated than Bruce could ever remember seeing him.
“Master Bruce, you must try,” he said, in his way that dripped with condescension.
Bruce wanted to cry. He was trying. But even though nothing had happened yet, and he trusted Alfred, and he believed no one would get hurt—even so, his heart was pounding so heavily in his chest that it ached. Sweat was soaking through his shirt and dampening his palms despite the crisp breeze. Every time he closed his eyes, the events of that night played out before him. His fingertips tingled with the imagined slickness of his mother’s blood.
A weight dropped into his hands suddenly, and his eyes shot open in surprise. There, in the shaky palms he’d been holding out before him, was Alfred’s shotgun. It was lighter than Bruce expected, he noted distantly as he struggled not to hurl.
He was getting dizzy and his mind seemed distant, but he pushed himself to feel the metal against his skin. It was biting in its coldness, any heat lost to the air. Slowly, he wrapped his fingers around it.
“Very good, Master Bruce. The gun is currently unloaded. The safety is on.”
Bruce got the impression this was repeated information. He realized Alfred had spoken much while he’d been distracted by his anxiety, and the guilt wore at his lingering panic. He needed to focus.
He was already successfully holding the gun. That was more than he’d ever expected himself capable of. (More than he’d ever wanted to do.) Bruce was strong, he tried to convince himself despite his shaking. He tried to make a list of reasons he needed to push through with this, but his focus was too weak for such planning.
Alfred pulled a red cylinder from the pocket of his jacket and lifted it to the light.
“This is your round. Watch me place it inside.”
Without taking the gun from Bruce’s hands, he pressed at its sides to open it. Seeing inside sharpened things and Bruce tried to focus his attention on the mechanics. If he had more time it might be interesting to dissect the gun the way he once did Alfred’s old radio.
He wished guns could be a theoretical marvel and not a dangerous piece of metal he was forced to hold in his own hands.
He watched Alfred slide the round into the upper opening. Then he pulled out a second, proffering it to Bruce.
With a tentative—though no longer shaking—hand, Bruce took the piece and slotted it into place. He might not like this, but the warm glow that filled him when Alfred affectionately clapped his shoulder brought clarity. If he could get through this day, he could make Alfred proud. That didn’t happen very often.
Alfred appreciated his fine schoolwork, he thought, in the sense that it meant Bruce was living up to his family legacy on the path to becoming a doctor like his father, but there were never tests hung on the fridge like Bruce knew his classmates received. Bruce was always either meeting or failing expectations, but he wanted to excel. He wanted more of this affection, however unconsciously it was given.
It made sense that guns were the way to Alfred’s heart. Bruce grew up knowing of Alfred’s time as an intelligence officer. When he was young he’d follow at the butler’s heels, begging for exciting stories until his mother managed to pull him away.
Surely, guns like these were a natural part of Alfred’s life, present for decades. A tie to the life he left behind when he joined the Wayne family. The life Bruce kept him from. Bruce would selfishly accept any resentment so long as Alfred never left him alone, but if he could press this advantage and make Alfred proud? That would be a dream—he’d never want for anything again.
“What do I do next?” He asked, voice steady.
—
Apparently, the next step was firing.
“Hold it here,” Alfred showed him, maneuvering Bruce’s body easily into the appropriate position. Bruce let his limbs each lock into those places, trying not to think about how close his finger rested to the trigger. The brush of metal against his face was disconcerting, but Bruce stubbornly pushed back the discomfort.
“There is a silver bead at the end of the barrel,” Alfred tapped it with the tip of his finger, in case Bruce was too blind to see it, probably. “That is what you will aim at your target. There will be a noticeable kickback after you shoot. Brace yourself accordingly.”
Bruce stood a distance from the training target, every muscle in his body tensed taut. Each breath through his nose was forced and calculated, a careful fight against his instinctive panic.
Alfred was beside him, watching intently. It was both stressful and comforting to have him there—at least Bruce knew he was outside of the line of fire.
Bruce was still trembling slightly, and it made aim tricky; he tried to line up the silver bead with the center of the target, but it kept driving off and he’d have to realign it seconds later.
He watched the swaying aim, at war with himself. This still felt so wrong. Like a betrayal of his beliefs, of his parents.
He’d never really thought of Alfred as taking anything away from his parents before. Martha and Thomas were his mom and dad, while Alfred was, by his own insistence, Bruce’s employee.
(An employee who bossed him around and gave him advice and attended all of his parent-teacher conferences and—)
Suddenly, though, Bruce felt like he was at war between his parents’ memory and Alfred’s approval. Which mattered more to him? How could he possibly quantify either?
He had to, though. His parents were no longer here. All he had was Alfred, who was watching from just outside his line of sight. Probably incredibly disappointed, and probably justified in that disappointment because Bruce was pathetic, wasn’t he? Fourteen, and yet he still couldn’t let go.
He flicked off the safety. It wasn’t like he was shooting people. Maybe his parents would forgive this. And maybe Alfred was right in the first place to suggest that Thomas would actually be disappointed in his fear, but Bruce couldn’t know because he’d never get to speak with him again and he just felt like he was going around and around in circles in his mind as the gun twisted in tiny circles to circumvent his shaking and stay fixated on the center of the target and the more it went on the dizzier he felt but at least it was enough of a pattern that if he could just—
Bryce yanked on the trigger, probably harder than he needed to, and sound erupted around him. That’s what it felt like, anyway: an overwhelming burst that threw him back into a memory.
The Bang! was loud and close. Mother screamed and pressed Bruce closer into her side, his face hidden in the folds of her skirt so he couldn’t see what happened. There was another Bang! and this one he felt echo through his mom’s body. Both of his parents collapsed onto the dirty ground of the Alleyway. Bruce pushed and pulled and shouted and cried, but they didn’t move, whatever he did. Eventually, he gave up and just sat between the two corpses, holding his parents’ hands in his and hoping for another Bang!
Bruce came back to himself on the ground, again. The arms wrapped around his knees were pulled tight as a vice as he tried desperately to keep himself there, to avoid returning to the alley again.
He calmed his breaths slowly, counting them carefully until they were even. The pressure against his ribcage lightened, though he could still feel it, faintly, like a threat of its inevitable return.
And there was Alfred, looking at him with concern-disappointment in his eyes, so Bruce launched back up as quickly as possible. He wobbled, vision blurry, but righted himself quickly and lifted the shotgun from where he’d dropped it.
Looking to the target, he could make out a smattering of holes in the upper-right quadrant. His aim had been off. Unsurprising, given the shaking of his hands, but disappointing nonetheless.
Still, he’d done it. He pulled the trigger and he shot the gun and there was no going back now. Any complaints his parents’ spirits had were silent. Only the faintest rustling could be heard in the distance. Nothing moved to stop him.
He prepped the next shell and brought the shotgun back up to his face. This worked out just fine the last time, he reminded himself. There were no casualties. Alfred was standing beside him still, well outside the range of even the worst-aimed shot.
Bruce ran though all of this cautiously and only after ensuring Alfred’s safety was he able to pull the trigger. This time the blowback was less overwhelming. Bruce grunted but took the force into his shoulder, keeping the rest of his body steady and upright.
This time his shot was much closer to the center. Not a perfect bullseye, but the outer range of his shot sat in the central circle of the target.
“Incredible improvement, Master Bruce,” said Alfred, and Bruce tried not to preen. Sure, he didn’t particularly want to be good with guns, but it always felt good to excel.
(Even if he still felt disgusting and anxious. Like there were worms wiggling around in his stomach, some parasite taking over. This was a common feeling: he was used to ignoring it.)
And with each subsequent shot, Bruce found himself shaking less. He still didn’t like holding the gun, but it became easier to go through the motions. He could almost view it not as a weapon, but as an impressive bit of machinery, like a radio. He was just using a piece of technology, and no one was getting hurt.
The lingering nausea was an irrational trauma response that he would need to train out of himself—especially if he did have goals of solving problems one day. What could he do to help others like him that wouldn’t at least see a gun?
If he became a cop or a detective he’d be at a scene, looking at weapon evidence. Possibly handling defensive weapons himself. Even a prosecutor would certainly have to see such evidence in their court hearings. If he really wanted to make a difference, these things were unavoidable.
Bruce’s third bullseye in a row flew through the open gap of canvas and plunked into the tree trunk behind. He turned to Alfred, proud despite the lingering shame of even carrying a weapon like the criminal who ruined his life.
Alfred’s smile made all of his choices worth it. Bruce was used to disappointed sighs and forlorn expressions, but this smile was much rarer. He thought he might do anything for it.
He knew that level of devotion was odd among his age group. Most were hardly associating with their parents more than they had to, but Bruce knew just how precious Alfred was after the loss of both his parents. He knew he could not handle losing Alfred, as understandable as it would be for Alfred to want to leave.
Bruce was a difficult child, angry and violent at times. He didn’t pay attention in school and he got into fights with boys in the grades above him. It wasn’t until he was twelve that a school counselor told him they’d have to look into whether Alfred was truly a fit guardian.
The change was sudden. The next day he got a 100 on his history test. There were no more incidents. As angry as Bruce was—and he was, even at fourteen, so so angry—his anger was meaningless without something to protect: his family. That was only Alfred now.
He didn’t know if Alfred actually thought of him as family, but sometimes he thought it might be the case. Days like this where they talked and worked together without any ordering about let him imagine Alfred viewed him as a son more so than an employer. He would never bring himself to ask, because he knew he couldn’t handle a ‘no.’
So maybe that’s why he didn’t question it when Alfred turned him toward a different canvas, this one with the image of a deer printed on it, and explained the most efficient and painless target points. Despite the renewed discomfort, Bruce pressed on, and he fired as he was told, like the good soldier Alfred wanted of him.
And maybe that’s why he didn’t protest when Alfred suggested they trek further into the forest. Because Alfred was smiling. He looked proud. Bruce desperately wanted to keep that for as long as he could. It was concerning, perhaps, what he was willing to give up for Alfred, but there wasn’t anything to do for it.
He marched into the woods, just a few steps behind Alfred.
The next piece, Bruce found surprisingly enjoyable. He could imagine he was a detective, following the clues. There were prints embedded in the damp dirt and feces along their path. He blocked out thoughts about their goal, because he still didn’t know what he’d do. He focused instead on these details as Alfred pointed them out to him, cataloguing each hint and forming a mental map of the woods as they traversed them.
Alfred moved swiftly and softly, in his element. The way he expertly avoided branches and crunchy leaves left Bruce feeling like a giant crashing through the brush. He took effort to watch his feet and place them only in Alfred’s footprints. Though the shotgun was unloaded, Bruce checked every few minutes to make sure the safety was still on and kept the gun aimed steadily at the ground.
Bruce almost crashed into Alfred’s back, so focused on the ground below him was he. Alfred silently gestured forward, and Bruce could see a flash of movement between trees in the distance. If he squinted he could make out the vague shape of a deer. He nodded back, suppressing a shudder.
They continued onward, even quieter than before. It was like one of those rare days that Alfred let him help in the kitchen—working silently alongside one another in a careful kind of harmony. Just like those instances, Bruce was following orders and keeping out of the way. At least it seemed he was better with a gun than a kitchen knife.
(If only he could swap. If only he could choose.)
They crested a small hill which gave a steady view of the extended space of the woods. The area was not so picturesque as it might have been at another time of year—the tree branches were winding and scraggy with only a few pathetic-looking leaves clinging to their bark. There were no bright flowers and the patches of grass were yellowed severely.
A few large rocks sat near the top of the hill in a way that must have been human design. They formed a comfortable viewing bench, and it was there that Bruce and Alfred sat to refresh themselves. Alfred pulled from his belt a canteen.
“Drink, but not so much. You will need more energy to return.”
Bruce took the cup from Alfred’s hands and gulped at the water. The warm drink slid down his throat easily, and it felt like a great sacrifice to hand the rest back to Alfred.
Alfred took only the smallest sip before recapping the canteen and returning it to his belt.
The way Alfred sat was unlike his usual posture—no less formal or dignified, but more alert, more engaged. His elbows rested lightly on his thighs as he stretched his neck forward to sweep the area.
Bruce tried to mimic the shape of Alfred’s body, like the game he used to play as a kid, following Alfred around and copying everything he did. Now, this meant spreading his knees and straightening his back as he squinted into the distance. Despite his recent growth spurt, he was still several inches shorter than Alfred.
He wondered if that even made a difference. Surely with all his training Alfred could see better than any young boy who hardly knew what he was searching for.
This part, Bruce could admit, bored him greatly. He itched to press back into the action, or to at least have a path to their next clue. Here, there was nothing to distract him from that swirl of anxiety in his stomach. His back collapsed back into its normal poor posture, ignoring Alfred’s tut, and he leaned back instead to look toward the sky.
“Did you do this with your father?” he asked in a moment of impulsiveness. He regretted the words once he said them. He knew how little Alfred liked to be compared to a father, and he tried to respect that. They were different, he was aware. It wasn’t fair to even suggest such familiarity.
(Whatever Bruce might have wished.)
But there was no scolding this time.
“He did,” Alfred replied. Something in his tone was different than Bruce was used to, in a way that was hard to pin down. Bruce wasn’t very good with identifying those nuances of communication. Another blind spot he needed to work on, surely, if he ever wanted to be a help to anyone at all.
Alfred, in a rare moment of candor, continued unprompted.
“I was firing my first gun before I turned six. It was an important skill, then, and one I excelled at.”
Hearing about Alfred’s childhood was a rare occurrence. Somewhere in the boxes of Bruce’s youthful nonsense was a notebook full of theories he’d written when he was seven. Stories in which Alfred met the Queen of England or apprenticed with magicians in Brazil.
Bruce pushed the palm of his hand down hard on his knee, trying not to vibrate with his excitement. He wasn’t sure what to say that wouldn’t seem too nosy. Alfred wasn’t usually fond of him asking questions, so he just pressed his lips together and waited hopefully for more.
“My family had no need to capture our own food, but it served as a pleasant pastime. It also served as training for my inevitable service to my country. I was the best shot at the agency.”
Visions pressed at Bruce’s temple of a younger Alfred, before his wrinkles or balding, slinking through London alleyways, sliding through the shadows as he marked his prey. Then, when at last the target was truly cornered, Alfred unflinchingly raised his pistol and shot the man in the head.
In echoes of that night, the blood sprayed out. The man collapsed to the ground with only a short shout. The shot went cleanly through his skull.
Bruce had tried, two years before, to get himself over his fear of guns by reading about them. The book he found hidden in a corner of the Wayne’s grand library detailed the most effective targets. Grotesque diagrams of the human body showed vital organs and arteries. He knew from that, and from the report he’d stolen out of the family safe, that his mom’s injury—the shot through her neck—was a painful and horrifying death.
Bruce had closed that book and thrown it into the library’s roaring fire, but it did nothing to stop his nightmares. In the following weeks he recalled, with new clarity and understanding, the way his mom’s final breaths were gurgled and wet.
A kid at school, trying to get a rise out of him, insulted his mom, and Bruce punched the boy in the throat. Then, guilty and ashamed, he ran to the bathroom and hit the brick wall until he broke a knuckle.
To think about Alfred’s job without succumbing to that violent anger required him to picture it like a Bond film, clean and calculated and justified as those movies made the spies seem. Bruce feared, suddenly, that perhaps he couldn’t handle hearing more about Alfred’s past. This very thing he yearned for so long might destroy them completely, but Bruce couldn’t stop himself from listening. His curiosity burned through him. He could not shun this chance at information even if it would bode better for his sanity.
He stared out at the forest, unable to risk looking at Alfred’s face.
“I recognize your unique position, and I commend you for rising above it.” Pride bubbled up in him once again, despite everything. Sure, he didn’t exactly get a choice in the matter, but at least for once he wasn’t a disappointment. Perhaps if he could master these weapons like Alfred wished, then he could be the savior he needed. Perhaps he could be an agent too, protecting his people and serving a cause. Perhaps then Alfred would be proud of him.
Not that Alfred owed him those words, obviously, but it would be nice. He could dream.
And with the shotgun right there—Bruce stretched his hand out and, despite all remaining instinct, grasped it where it leaned against the rock beside him. It was solid in his hand, and its weight still felt imposing, but he wasn’t shaking any longer. There could be a future where he and Alfred continued this tradition. He could play this role, and learn to tune out his guilt. It was only immature clinginess to a simplified portrait of his parents that had him acting this way.
“I’m ready to keep going,” Bruce said, though it didn’t feel true. He still wasn’t sure what he was doing. He should be honest, to say he wanted to turn back. Hell, he could just leave and there’d be nothing Alfred could do to stop him, but he knew what the result of that would be. He couldn’t bear the shame. The cold, familiar look of disappointment.
He was used to being called stubborn, from teachers when he didn’t listen or from bullies when he kept standing back up. It never felt like a compliment, but Bruce knew it was a strength. He could keep walking by Alfred’s side no matter what. His guilt and anxiety were powerful, but he was used to operating under their weight. He just needed to remember that. This was nothing special. He already held the gun and shot it and while yes, it did make him feel horribly ill, the actual effects were negligible.
He hit some cloth and made a hole. Would an animal be any different?
(Yes, he knew instinctively, but he shied away from the thought. He could bury it.)
This was a thing people did all the time. He ate meat, for Christ’s sake. He had no right to complain about animal violence. Admittedly, he’d never thought about it much before.
He’d never considered the moment of the animal’s death, the sparks of fear or confusion they might feel.
Watching the tracks, and noticing the variation, he had another realization.
He never realized they’d travel as families. Sure, he knew it abstractly, but it wasn’t something he’d thought about seriously.
And of course, just as he thought this, he saw a crowd of deer in the distance.
Alfred signalled him a moment later. It was the same sign system they used to use when Bruce was little, giggling and following each of Alfred’s unspoken guidance like they were orders from an army commander.
He couldn’t find any joy or comfort in the reference.
Bruce moved forward like Alfred indicated. He was shaking again. His body was stiff with cold but also slick with building sweat, and Bruce nervously wiped his hand down his pants as they moved.
They settled in a grove of trees for cover. Complete silence descended on them as Alfred eyeballed the shot and Bruce panicked.
Could he get out of this now? Worse case scenario, he could always run back to the manor. But how would he face Alfred ever again?
Alfred pressed in close, and Bruce could almost imagine it was a hug. He’d been craving one of those for so pathetically long that he instinctively pressed back into the shoulder against his. Alfred inched back slightly, reestablishing that gap between them. Bruce tried not to mourn the touch.
“There’s your best target,” Alfred murmured, pointing. Bruce could see the one he was indicating—a medium-sized male, in clear view and slightly apart from the others. His mind automatically ran through the puzzle and found his answer for why: this deer was big enough to harvest a significant quantity of meat, but not so big that he and Alfred could not carry its carcass together.
The thought made Bruce want to throw up. He imagined that hide under his hands, slowly growing colder. The stickiness of blood on his hands again, but this time he would be guilty. He’d be the shooter.
Alfred gave him an impatient signal. If he was going to do it, he needed to go quickly before the group took off. His hands were shaking again—no, not just his hands, but his whole body trembling with nerves and need and guilt as he reluctantly flipped off the safety.
The deer were cozy together. There were three of them, and it was impossible not to make the connection. Bruce, inevitably, found himself looking at the smallest one. A boy with short antlers, scratching his hooves in the dirt. The gun naturally followed Bruce’s sightline, aimed at the fawn’s body, a smaller mimicry of his cloth target before.
He knew, suddenly and deeply, that he could not kill this child’s parent. The pain of his parents’ deaths was the worst thing Bruce had ever known, and he could not subject any other living thing to that. Perhaps there was something fundamentally different about Bruce. Perhaps he was broken in a way Alfred could not understand or fix. He’d have to live with that, because he’d rather kill himself than risk another’s life.
He was not the soldier son Alfred seemed to want. He could not be.
Tears beaded in his eyes as he slowly lowered the shotgun.
“Boy, what do you think you’re doing?” Alfred hissed, close again. Bruce couldn’t appreciate it this time.
“I can’t do it,” he announced, no longer caring about scaring off the deer. He hoped they ran away. He wanted them to be free.
“If you will not do your duty, then allow me,” Alfred said, still quiet and all the more scary for it. Hands gripped the gun and tried to wrench it away.
“No,” Bruce argued, emboldened. “I won’t let you make him an orphan.”
He tried to keep his grip on the gun, but it was slipping through his fingers, and then a lot of things happened at once.
There was a strong jerk and a loud Bang! and Bruce screamed and deer fled swiftly through rustling bushes.
Lying there, bloody but moving still, twitching to stand, was the baby deer.
Bruce couldn’t fight as the gun was ripped from his hand, loaded, and swiftly fired again. He watched in shock as this well-aimed shot stopped the final bit of movement. Bruce stared, numb, at the corpse in the grove. Tears streamed down his face.
Alfred stood and stalked toward their fallen prey. Bruce could only stumble after, tripping over roots until he collapsed next to the fawn.
The empty face was disturbing, but not more than his parents’ had been. Bruce peered at it with a perverse sense of fascination, suddenly very calm. The guilt tore through him and all he could do was touch a gentle hand to the animal’s head and whisper, “You’re the lucky one.”
It sounded horrible, he knew, but he meant it. Nothing was worse than losing a parent. If Bruce could sacrifice himself to bring his mom and dad back, he'd do it in a heartbeat.
This deer would not know the pain and grief of being an orphan. Bruce could not regret that result, even if he did regret everything that came before it.
Alfred pushed him by the shoulder, moving him aside to inspect the bullet wounds, scrutinizing them closely with a pinched expression that Bruce knew was barely concealing fury.
He wanted to defend himself. He just felt tired.
"Take this," Alfred commanded, shoving the shotgun back into Bruce's hands. There was no chance for protest, and Bruce didn't bother. He was, as proven that day, a monster. He deserved far greater punishment than anything Alfred could devise.
(Even if Bruce was still angry at Alfred, because this was all Alfred's idea in the first place and how dare Alfred be mad at him for not meeting such a stupid, stupid standard of violence and destruction.)
(How come Bruce couldn't seem to be bad in the right way? Even when he destroyed his own moral code, he was still a horrible failure. How could he always be uniquely broken?)
The foal was small enough that Alfred could carry it in his arms alone, forcing Bruce to carry the gun as they trekked back through the forest. He watched the gun more than his feet and frequently stumbled. Alfred didn’t say anything, but his feelings echoed through the silence all the same.
That night, Alfred placed a bowl down harshly at Bruce’s table setting, hardly bothering to look at Bruce at all. The disappointment was palpable, and it sunk through Bruce till he felt it in his bones. He shuddered with it, and ducked to hide his pooling tears.
The bowl held a warm brown soup, thick chunks of meat floating through it. Bruce couldn’t help but sob with each spoonful he choked down. It was delicious and he decided, once again, that he hated the world.
Bruce stayed up late that night, restless. He finished reading To Kill a Mockingbird with a flashlight under his covers, and then threw the book in the trash. It didn’t tell him anything new—the world sucked and people sucked and people died and sometimes there was nothing you could do about it.
Yet Bruce itched with a need to try. He paced the length of his room as he fought with himself. He couldn’t be the man Alfred wanted him to be, the obedient soldier, and he had no patience for the law. But maybe Bruce could be his own knight, serving not the country or the law, but Gotham and her people.
He could save lives, and never take them. He could fight the beast within him to do what was right. He could honor his parents’ memory and preserve his ethics.
(And he would disappoint Alfred again and again and again and again and—)