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At twelve minutes past three in the morning, Alfred Pennyworth found Bruce Wayne bleeding on the Persian runner and attempting to telephone his eldest son.
Neither circumstance was unusual enough to be interesting on its own. The combination, however, suggested that the remainder of the night would not proceed according to Alfred’s preferred schedule, which at that hour consisted chiefly of being unconscious.
Alfred had reached an age at which sleep was no longer a vulgar waste of useful hours but a medical recommendation. He had been in bed for precisely forty-seven minutes. His slippers were warm, his dressing gown was tied incorrectly, and the detective novel on his bedside table had just produced a second corpse in a locked conservatory. He had intended to give the inspector until half past three to solve it.
The inspector would have to manage alone. This was character-building for him.
“Master Bruce,” he said.
Bruce held up one finger. It was the gesture of a man requesting silence while engaged in a matter of surpassing importance. It was somewhat undermined by the fact that the finger was dripping blood.
“Dick isn’t answering.”
“Master Richard is thirty years old.”
“That doesn’t make him bulletproof.”
“No, sir. Merely old enough to resent being telephoned by his father at three in the morning.”
Bruce looked at the screen. His cowl was pushed back, leaving his hair damp and flattened in several directions. He had a cut above one eyebrow, another at his jaw, and a tear along the side of his uniform through which one could glimpse an amount of blood normally discouraged in the principal rooms.
“He missed check-in.”
“By how long?”
“Nine minutes.”
Alfred looked at the grandfather clock.
“The fiend.”
Bruce’s mouth compressed. “Something could have happened.”
Something had plainly happened to Bruce. This appeared to have escaped his notice.
Alfred removed the telephone from his hand.
“Hey...”
“Cave. Now.”
There had been a time when Bruce had required coaxing. As a boy he had been stubborn in the manner of a terrier confronted with a drainpipe: small, determined, and convinced that the universe would yield if worried at sufficiently. Age had broadened his shoulders, deepened his voice, and supplied him with several billion dollars. It had not materially altered the terrier.
“Alfred, I need...”
“You need six stitches, an examination of your ribs, and perhaps a small commemorative plaque marking the occasion on which you finally learned not to bleed on a nineteenth-century carpet.”
“That carpet isn’t nineteenth-century.”
“It is now, sir. You have aged it considerably.”
Bruce swayed.
Alfred caught his elbow. He did not say anything about it. Neither did Bruce.
They descended to the cave.
The medical bay contained everything required to treat a medium-sized military engagement and nothing whatsoever capable of making Bruce a cooperative patient.
Alfred cut away the damaged section of uniform. Bruce sat on the examination table and watched the tracking display beyond Alfred’s shoulder.
Alfred’s hands proceeded through the old sequence without requiring instruction. Cut fabric. Clean blood. Test the joint above the injury and the joint below. Watch the eyes. Listen to the breathing. He had learned parts of it in the service, parts in theatres where the dressing rooms had seen rougher action than the stage, and the remainder through the lamentable practical education of raising Bruce Wayne.
There were nights when Alfred could almost believe that familiarity had robbed the work of fear. Then Bruce would draw one breath a fraction too carefully, and Alfred would discover that fear was in excellent health.
Six coloured markers moved across the map of Gotham and its neighbouring cities.
Alfred had long considered the display injurious to family life. In most homes, a parent whose adult child failed to answer the telephone could distract himself with a cup of tea and the thought that the child was probably busy. Bruce had satellites.
“Master Richard’s marker is moving,” Alfred said.
“Too fast.”
“He is travelling by motorcycle.”
“He shouldn’t take the bridge into Bristol Township at this hour. There was an ice warning.”
“I shall alert the municipal authorities that Batman has identified winter.”
Bruce ignored this. “Jason’s stopped.”
Alfred glanced at the display. “Master Jason is on Grant Street.”
“He’s been stationary for eleven minutes.”
“Grant Street contains a twenty-four-hour takeaway.”
“It also contains three known criminal safe houses.”
“Two, sir. The third is now a Pilates studio.”
“That could be a front.”
“For improved posture?”
Bruce reached for the computer. Alfred pressed two fingers against a bruised rib.
Bruce stopped reaching.
“Cracked,” Alfred said.
“Bruised.”
“Would you care to place a wager?”
“You don’t have an X-ray.”
“I have known your ribs since before you did.”
The telephone rang. Bruce lunged for it with the heedless optimism of a spaniel chasing a carriage and nearly fell off the table.
Alfred answered.
“Wayne residence.”
“Why are you answering his phone?” Dick asked.
“Your father is indisposed.”
Bruce extended a hand.
Alfred turned away.
“Is he hurt?” Dick’s voice sharpened at once.
“He is alive, conscious, and being tiresome. You were expected nine minutes ago.”
“There was a pile-up on the bridge into Bristol.”
Bruce mouthed, *Ice?*
Alfred ignored him. “Were you involved?”
“I stopped to help. I sent Bruce a message.”
Alfred looked at the telephone. There were four notifications beneath Bruce’s unanswered call. The most recent read: ACCIDENT ON BRIDGE. I’M FINE. HELPING. HOME SOON. DO NOT PANIC AND MOBILISE THE FAMILY.
“Your communication has been received,” Alfred said.
“He did the thing, didn’t he?”
“Which thing?”
“The thing where nine minutes becomes an obituary.”
“With distinction.”
Bruce reclaimed the telephone. “Are you injured?”
“Hello to you too.”
“Dick.”
“I’m fine. Nobody died. Ambulances are there now. Are *you* injured?”
“No.”
Alfred pulled a suture through Bruce’s skin.
Bruce hissed.
There was a pause on the line.
“Was that a stitch?” Dick asked.
“No.”
Alfred tied the knot. “Yes.”
“Alfred.”
“Master Richard.”
“How bad?”
“Concerning, but I have hopes for his personality.”
“I’m coming over.”
Bruce sat upright. “No. Go home. It’s late.”
“You called me four times.”
“Because you missed check-in.”
“By nine minutes!”
“The roads are icy.”
“Which is why you want me to drive home instead of to the Manor?”
Bruce opened his mouth.
It was occasionally possible to witness the exact moment at which a tactical genius discovered that he had manoeuvred himself into a cupboard. Alfred treasured these moments. They were one of the quieter rewards of service.
“Drive carefully,” Bruce said.
Dick laughed and ended the call.
Alfred held out his hand. Bruce surrendered the telephone.
“Lie back.”
“I need to check Jason.”
“Master Jason is purchasing food.”
“You don’t know that.”
The cave lift opened.
Jason emerged carrying a paper sack darkened with grease. His helmet was under one arm, and his leather jacket bore a fresh slash across the shoulder.
“Why did the old man send me a message asking whether I’d been kidnapped?” he said. “Who kidnaps me?”
Bruce swung his legs off the examination table. “Your stitches.”
“Hi, Bruce. Nice to see you too.”
“Your left side. You’re favouring it.”
“I got kicked.”
“Let me see.”
Jason looked at Alfred. “Why’s he bleeding?”
“Apparently he is not.”
“Ah.” Jason set down the food and opened the sack. “Want a chip?”
“No.”
“Alfred?”
“Thank you, Master Jason.”
Jason handed him one. Alfred ate it with the dignity available under the circumstances.
Bruce pointed at the examination table. “Sit.”
Jason pointed at the same table. “You sit.”
“I was sitting.”
“Then you’ve got a head start.”
Father and son regarded one another. Both were large, black-clad men with injuries they did not wish to discuss. Each considered the other reckless, secretive, and pathologically resistant to assistance. Neither possessed the faintest conception of irony.
Alfred took another chip.
Jason had been a thin boy when Alfred first taught him that chips eaten over the sink did not constitute dinner. Death had made him no easier to feed and considerably more argumentative about it. Alfred had responded by keeping three varieties of hot sauce in the pantry and never mentioning that they were for him.
“Master Jason,” he said, “your stitches, if you please.”
Jason lifted his shirt. The wound was intact, though badly bruised.
“Master Bruce,” Alfred continued, “your ribs.”
Bruce lay back.
The deadlock concluded, as so many Wayne family disputes did, when both parties discovered a third person more stubborn than either of them.
At three forty-five, Tim’s marker had not moved for twenty-three minutes.
Bruce noticed this while Alfred was taping his ribs.
“Tim.”
“What about him?” Jason asked through a mouthful of chips.
“He’s stationary.”
“Maybe he’s dead.”
Bruce went rigid.
Jason sighed. “That was a joke.”
“It was not an especially successful one,” Alfred said.
“Tough room.”
Bruce was already pulling up camera feeds. Tim’s marker hovered above Wayne Tower.
“He said he was going home two hours ago.”
“He lies about bedtime,” Jason said. “It’s his thing.”
“He has a meeting at eight.”
“Then he’ll be unbearable by ten.”
Alfred selected the Wayne Tower executive-floor cameras. The first showed an empty corridor. The second showed a conference room. The third showed Tim asleep face-down at his desk, one cheek resting on a financial report and a mug of coffee still clutched in his hand.
Alfred enlarged the image and checked the mug. Blue china, gold rim. It was one of the cups from the executive kitchen, which meant Tim had at least progressed beyond drinking directly from the office coffee pot. Parenting, Alfred had found, was largely the art of lowering one’s definition of victory without allowing the children to notice.
Bruce leaned towards the screen.
“Is he breathing?”
Jason stared at him. “He’s drooling.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
Alfred increased the volume. Tim snored.
“There,” Alfred said. “A robust sign of life.”
Bruce reached for his cowl.
“No,” said Alfred.
“I’m bringing him home.”
“No,” said Jason.
“He can’t sleep at his desk.”
Jason looked around the cave, whose various workstations had accommodated every member of the family in an unconscious state at one time or another. “Yeah. That’d be weird.”
Alfred telephoned Wayne Tower security and arranged for Tim to be placed in the executive suite upstairs, where there was a bed, a shower, and no active crime scene. He also instructed the morning secretary to cancel Tim’s eight o’clock meeting.
Bruce frowned. “He’ll be angry.”
“He will be rested while doing so.”
“Someone should stay with him.”
“The building has forty-three security officers.”
“They aren’t family.”
“No,” Jason said. “They get paid enough to put up with him.”
Bruce’s telephone rang again. Alfred checked the screen.
“Master Damian.”
Bruce took it. “Where are you?”
“In my room,” Damian said. His voice crackled through the speaker, hoarse and furious. “Where you ordered me to remain.”
“You sound worse.”
“I sound the same.”
He coughed for nine seconds.
“I’m coming up,” Bruce said.
“That is unnecessary.”
“You have a fever.”
“I have an elevated temperature. Fever is an emotive term.”
“Damian...”
“I require rest, which this conversation is preventing.”
The call ended.
Bruce stood.
Alfred had anticipated this. One survived long employment at Wayne Manor by recognising the distinction between prevention and interception. Preventing Bruce Wayne from doing a thing was frequently impossible. Intercepting him with the appropriate equipment was merely difficult.
Alfred picked up the thermometer, fever reducer, water, and the tray he had prepared before Bruce returned home.
“After you, sir.”
Damian’s bedroom door was locked.
Bruce tried the handle.
“Damian.”
“Go away.”
“Open the door.”
“No.”
“You’re sick.”
“A calumny.”
“Open it or I will.”
“Then why waste time requesting permission?”
Bruce looked at Alfred.
“He has you there, sir.”
Bruce produced a lock pick.
Alfred cleared his throat.
“The spare key is above the lintel.”
“I knew that.”
“Of course.”
Damian was in bed with Titus stretched across his feet and Alfred the cat occupying his pillow. Three textbooks lay open around him. He wore pyjamas printed with tiny green dinosaurs, a gift from Dick which he publicly despised and privately wore whenever clean.
The cat opened one eye at Alfred, found him satisfactory, and went back to sleep. Alfred had never approved of giving one’s own name to an animal. It complicated household instructions and allowed Master Damian to announce at breakfast that Alfred had been sick on the carpet. Still, the creature displayed sound judgement in chairs and an admirable suspicion of strangers. One could have been named for worse.
His cheeks were flushed.
Bruce sat beside him and touched the back of his hand to Damian’s forehead.
Damian recoiled. “Your hand is cold.”
“You’re burning up.”
“I am not.”
Alfred placed the thermometer beneath Damian’s tongue. “We shall allow science to referee.”
Damian glared around it.
Bruce adjusted the blankets. “Did you drink the water Alfred left?”
“Yes.”
The full glass remained on the bedside table.
“Damian.”
“I drank other water.”
“From where?”
Damian glanced at the bathroom.
“You didn’t get up.”
“You cannot prove that.”
The thermometer beeped. Alfred examined it.
“One hundred and one.”
“A trivial fluctuation.”
Bruce poured medicine into a cup.
Damian folded his arms. “I do not require coddling.”
“This isn’t coddling.”
“You tucked the blanket beneath my chin.”
Bruce looked down. His hand had indeed committed this offence without consulting him.
“Take the medicine.”
“It tastes like artificial cherries.”
“You’re fourteen.”
“Precisely. I have outgrown fruit-themed deception.”
“Master Bruce is nearly fifty,” Alfred said, “and still believes that describing a cracked rib as bruised renders it so. Age offers limited protection against foolishness.”
Damian’s eyes sharpened. “You fractured a rib?”
“No.”
“Yes,” Alfred said.
Damian pointed at the door. “Leave. You are a contagion risk.”
“Ribs aren’t contagious.”
“Your stupidity may be.”
“Medicine,” Bruce said.
“Bed,” Damian replied.
They exchanged another of those family looks which made Alfred wonder whether genetics had ever produced anything more inconvenient than resemblance.
“Both,” he said.
Damian swallowed the medicine. Bruce allowed Alfred to steer him towards the door.
As they left, Damian called, “Father.”
Bruce turned.
“Grayson’s marker is approaching the cave,” Damian said, looking at his own concealed tablet. “Todd has been stationary there for forty-one minutes. Drake remains at the Tower. Cain’s flight from Hong Kong landed nine minutes ago. Thomas is two blocks from the Manor.”
Bruce’s shoulders loosened by a degree perceptible only to those who had spent decades studying them.
“Go to sleep,” he said.
Damian tucked the dinosaur blanket higher. “You first.”
Duke arrived through the front door at four fifteen, carrying a takeaway coffee in one hand and a chemistry textbook in the other.
“Morning, Alfred.”
“Master Duke.”
“Is he mad?”
“Your father experiences concern at a volume others may mistake for anger.”
“So yes.”
“Quite.”
Alfred took the coffee from him, sniffed it, and returned it. It contained enough sugar to preserve a minor pharaoh.
“You have eaten?” he asked.
Duke produced a wrapped sandwich from his coat pocket.
Alfred nodded. Of all Bruce’s children, Duke most often arrived equipped with the ordinary necessities of continued existence. Alfred regarded this as proof that the universe did occasionally apologise.
Bruce appeared at the head of the stairs wearing jogging bottoms, a dressing gown, adhesive bandages, and the expression of a man who had been betrayed by every person under his roof.
“You have an exam.”
“At ten.”
“You were supposed to be asleep at two.”
“I was. Then I woke up, couldn’t get back to sleep and went to the university library. There was a carjacking on the way back.”
“You should have called.”
“I texted.”
Bruce checked the telephone Alfred had returned to him. His expression suggested that telephones which placed new messages beneath old ones were an affront to natural law.
“You need sleep,” Bruce said.
Duke looked pointedly at the bandage over Bruce’s eyebrow.
“Okay.”
The cave lift opened behind them. Dick stepped out, still in uniform, with Jason following and eating the last of his chips.
“You,” Bruce said to Dick. “Medical bay.”
“I’m not hurt.”
“You were in a pile-up.”
“Near one.”
“You said on the bridge.”
“It was on the bridge. I was also on the bridge. Those can be separate facts.”
Jason leaned towards Duke. “Careful. He’s discovered prepositions.”
“Why are you still here?” Bruce asked him.
“Alfred took my keys.”
“Because you were kicked hard enough to reopen a surgical wound,” Alfred said.
“Didn’t reopen.”
“Through no effort of yours.”
Dick approached Bruce. The light caught two silver hairs at his temple. Alfred had noticed them months ago. Bruce had noticed them too and had spent the following morning in the cave reviewing Dick’s medical history as though grey hair were a symptom of an obscure poisoning.
“Sit down,” Dick said.
“I’m fine.”
The phrase travelled around the hall and returned wearing the voices of all Bruce’s children.
Jason laughed first. Duke covered a smile with his textbook. Dick raised his eyebrows.
Bruce appeared to realise that the situation had acquired an audience and therefore required authority.
“Everyone should be in bed.”
“Great idea,” Dick said. “You first.”
“I need to contact Cass.”
“She checked in,” Duke said.
“Nine minutes ago,” Damian called from the landing.
Every head turned upward.
Damian stood wrapped in his dinosaur blanket like a very small, feverish Roman senator. Titus waited behind him.
Bruce’s expression darkened. “Why are you out of bed?”
“I heard Thomas arrive.”
“Back to bed.”
“You first.”
“This is not a negotiation.”
“Correct,” Damian said. “You are outnumbered.”
Alfred heard a soft footfall behind him.
Cassandra stood inside the open front door.
No one had seen her approach. This was Cassandra’s customary relationship with entrances.
Her gaze passed over the hall and collected every relevant fact: Bruce’s guarded ribs, Jason’s bruised side, Damian’s blanket, Dick’s wet boots, the medical kit in Duke’s hand, and the fatigue Alfred had been concealing since the second corpse in the conservatory.
Cass touched two fingers to Alfred’s wrist.
*You too,* the gesture said.
Alfred gave her the smallest shake of his head.
Her expression suggested that the matter had not been settled, merely postponed.
She wore civilian clothes and carried a small overnight bag. There was a healing bruise along her cheekbone. Bruce crossed the hall before Alfred could object.
“You were in Hong Kong.”
“Plane,” Cass said.
“You didn’t tell me you were coming.”
“Surprise.”
Bruce examined the bruise. Cass examined the bandage above his eyebrow. Her eyes dropped to the way he guarded his ribs.
“Bed,” she said.
“Cass...”
She removed his utility belt.
Bruce looked down, apparently uncertain how this had occurred.
Cass handed the belt to Alfred.
“Thank you, Miss Cassandra.”
“Traitor,” Bruce said.
Cass smiled and kissed his cheek.
The matter was settled.
Getting Bruce upstairs required Dick at one elbow, Cass at the other, Jason behind him issuing threats, Duke carrying the medical supplies, Damian supervising from beneath his blanket, and Alfred walking ahead with the calm bearing of a man who had planned the entire campaign.
This was excessive. Alfred could have managed it alone.
It was also, he admitted privately, rather satisfying.
Bruce was installed in his bedroom at four thirty-eight. Dick drew the curtains. Duke placed water on the bedside table. Cass returned the telephone only after Alfred had disabled the cave alerts. Jason sat on Bruce’s feet.
“Get off.”
“No.”
“You’re crushing my ankle.”
“Good. Now you’ve got something real to complain about.”
“Jason.”
“Sleep.”
“You all need...”
“If you tell us we need rest,” Dick said, “I am going to find a mirror and make you look into it.”
Bruce fell silent.
One by one, satisfied that he was unlikely to escape through a window, the children withdrew. Damian was carried back to bed by Duke despite describing the arrangement as humiliating. Jason took the chair outside Bruce’s door. Cass went to make tea. Dick telephoned Barbara in the hall.
Alfred remained.
Bruce lay against the pillows, staring at the ceiling.
Alfred straightened the bottles on the bedside table, although they were already straight. His own back had begun to object to the evening. The objection was reasoned, detailed, and unlikely to influence proceedings.
“You should sleep,” Alfred said.
“Cass is bruised.”
“Miss Cassandra has confirmed that she is well.”
“Jason’s side needs ice.”
“There is an ice pack in his immediate future.”
“Damian’s fever...”
“Is responding to medicine.”
“Duke has an exam.”
“For which he is prepared.”
“Tim is alone.”
“Master Timothy is asleep in a secure building which he owns.”
“Dick...”
“Has survived the weather.”
Bruce turned his head. Without the uniform, the cowl, and the set of his jaw, he looked less like Batman. He did not look young. Alfred was not senile, whatever certain members of the family implied when he caught them standing on antique furniture. There was grey at Bruce’s temples now. Fine lines remained around his eyes even when he did not scowl. The boy Alfred had once carried upstairs after nightmares had become a middle-aged man with children who had begun acquiring grey hairs of their own.
This altered nothing of consequence.
“Every time one of them is late,” Bruce said, “I think...”
He stopped.
Alfred waited.
“I know what I think isn’t reasonable.”
“A refreshing development.”
Bruce gave him a tired look.
“I see the alley,” he said. “Ethiopia. A rooftop in Blüdhaven. A sky full of Colony drones. Every time I wasn’t fast enough.”
There were subjects on which Alfred could offer reassurance. He could explain that the Manor’s foundations were sound, that a soufflé had not fallen, that Master Damian’s latest pet was unlikely to destroy the west wing.
He could not tell Bruce that everyone he loved would always come home. They had both lived too long for that sort of lie.
“I understand,” Alfred said.
“I know they’re adults.”
“Most of them.”
“They’re trained. Capable.”
“Exceedingly.”
“They don’t need me hovering.”
“Not with satellites, perhaps.”
Bruce closed his eyes. “I don’t know how to stop.”
Alfred pulled the blankets higher.
“I have spent more than twenty years waiting for you to return from evenings during which you were punched, stabbed, shot, poisoned, concussed, thrown from buildings, and once bitten by what you insisted was not a vampire.”
“It wasn’t.”
“It had a cape and drank blood.”
“That’s circumstantial.”
“As you say.” Alfred smoothed the blanket. “My point, sir, is that I know precisely how it feels to wait for one’s child to return from a night spent being shot at. I have merely had rather more practice.”
Bruce was quiet for a moment. “Does it get easier?”
Alfred considered lying. A butler was required to lie about surprise parties, the availability of biscuits before dinner, and whether an employer’s formal jacket had become tighter across the middle. He was not required to lie about this.
“No,” he said. “One becomes more efficient. The fear learns to sit quietly while one boils water and prepares sutures. It does not leave.”
“You never say anything.”
“I say a great many things. You disregard most of them.”
“You know what I mean.”
Alfred did. He sat on the edge of the bed, which he had not intended to do. “Someone had to remain calm. You had made other arrangements.”
Bruce looked at him then, not as Batman consulting a medic or an employer receiving a report. It was the look he had worn at ten years old after waking from a nightmare and discovering Alfred in the chair beside him.
“I’m sorry,” Bruce said.
“For which incident?”
“All of them.”
“That is too broad an apology to be administratively useful. We shall begin with the carpet and proceed alphabetically.”
Bruce laughed once, then caught his ribs and regretted it.
Bruce opened his eyes.
“I’m nearly fifty.”
“Yes. Your hearing remains excellent.”
“I’m not a child.”
“No.” Alfred switched off the bedside lamp. “You are *my* child. This is a separate and incurable condition.”
For once, Bruce had no answer.
His breathing slowed. Alfred sat beside him until the line between his brows eased and sleep finally claimed him.
At seven in the morning, Alfred returned with tea and found that Wayne Manor had developed a blockage.
Dick slept in the armchair beside the window, long legs hanging over one side. Cass lay curled at the foot of the bed. Duke had fallen asleep on the rug with his chemistry book open beneath his cheek. Damian occupied the chaise beneath three blankets, Titus on the floor beside him. Jason remained in the doorway, chin resting on his chest and one hand still loosely curled around a knife.
Tim, evidently delivered by a worried security driver sometime after six, was asleep across the threshold.
Alfred counted seven children.
He included Bruce. It was his house, and he would count as he pleased.
He had counted them all night. Six lights to watch on a tracking display. Six whereabouts to confirm. Then, one by one, six bodies crossing the threshold with the customary number of limbs. Bruce made seven, breathing steadily in the room where Alfred had left him.
The habit was not one he discussed. Alfred Pennyworth did not fret. He verified. He confirmed. He maintained a responsible awareness of conditions. If this responsible awareness occasionally required him to stand alone in the cave at two in the morning watching coloured lights move across Gotham, that was nobody’s affair.
Bruce stirred when Alfred set down the tray. His eyes opened, unfocused at first. Then they travelled around the room.
Dick.
Jason.
Tim.
Cassandra.
Damian.
Duke.
Alfred watched him reach six.
Bruce’s shoulders settled. His eyes closed again.
Then they opened.
Bruce looked at Alfred.
“Seven,” he murmured.
“Your concussion appears to have affected your arithmetic.”
“You’re here.”
Alfred adjusted the tea tray. “An occupational hazard.”
Bruce closed his eyes, satisfied this time.
Alfred drew the curtains against the morning sun, rescued the chemistry book from beneath Duke’s face, and placed a blanket over Tim. He removed the knife from Jason’s hand, because there were limits even in this household.
Cass had left the remaining armchair empty. On its small table stood a fresh cup of tea.
Alfred looked at her. She did not open her eyes.
There were defeats which a sensible man accepted with grace. Alfred sat down.
Bruce Wayne was nearly fifty, responsible for six highly trained vigilantes, and perfectly capable of surviving a morning without supervision.
Alfred remained unconvinced on all three points.
He drank his tea, counted seven once more, and permitted his own eyes to close.