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The Manor feels small after traveling the world. Bruce walks up the drive, surrounded by lush gardens full of green trees and blooming flowers, and wonders at the fact that this place was once all he knew. For a moment, he tries to remember why he returned at all, to this pretty, shallow shell that hides the echoing loneliness of his childhood.
Then he reaches the front door, where Alfred is standing with arms held out and tears in his eyes, and Bruce wonders how he could have stayed away so long.
…
“I’m going to stop crime in the city,” he tells Alfred as he sets up waterproofed computer equipment in the cavern below the Manor. “Brucie Wayne by day and nameless crimefighter by night.”
“Master Bruce,” Alfred says, stepping daintily around a scuzzy puddle and blatantly ignoring the loud chittering of bats in the stalactites, “You are nearly 22 years old, a well-traveled and educated young man. Surely you know that stopping crime completely is an impossible task.”
Bruce carefully tapes down the last extension cord. It took eight of them to reach this spot, but it’s not as though he didn’t have the money to purchase them. “Stop it completely? No,” he says, and stands to face his adopted parent full on. “But I can scare some of it away. I can reduce it until we’re better off than the other cities like Metropolis or Star instead of looking like a cesspool in comparison. And with Brucie creating and funding charities that aren’t corrupt, we can perhaps even keep crime rates down for good.”
Alfred’s face remains drawn. Bruce steps forward and takes hold of his forearms, trying to show his sincerity. “I swore to help the children, Alfred,” he says. “The ones like me, who lost their parents, and the ones who didn’t have their own Manor and butler to care for them afterwards. Tell me that’s not a worthy goal and I will end this whole operation right now.”
Alfred draws their arms up enough that he can cup Bruce’s face in his hands. The thin fingers feel fragile against his clean shaven skin. “You know I cannot do that, my boy.”
“I know.” Bruce looks down and closes his eyes, waiting for a verdict. He would still stop if Alfred needed him to, if he asked and truly meant it, and they both know it. But stopping would tear Bruce in half, would stain his soul with helpless despair, and he trusts that Alfred will understand. Alfred always knows what to do.
“No more than three times a week.”
Bruce snaps his eyes up with excitement. “Yes!”
Alfred fixes him with a stern glare, unrelenting in the face of a grin Bruce is a little too proud to admit the newspapers wax poetic about. “You will be home by half two in the morning and no later,” he says, “and if anything goes wrong you will call me immediately and we may renegotiate from there. Are we clear?”
“Yes!” He can’t believe this is really happening.
“Good.” Alfred looks around the Cave. “Now, what is your plan for a costume?”
…
At first he is nothing but an urban legend. A few criminals mysteriously caught here, a robbery put to a stop there. Nothing too unusual.
But then a mob stuck deep in Gotham like an infected burr starts getting put away and not coming back out. A few whispers of a faceless man in black with wings like a bat travel up the grapevine. The Mob Boss himself is caught by the police a week later after an anonymous tip, wrapped up in his office chair with his own cuffs and a shining black eye on display. He’s sentenced to life in Blackgate for his crimes. No one sets him free.
That’s when the rumor mill really starts to churn.
“I heard an interesting story on my way to the grocery this morning,” Alfred says casually as he sips his tea.
“Oh?” Bruce is half awake and shoveling eggs into his mouth, but he pauses at Alfred’s tone.
“Yes. Word on the street says that there’s a vampire on the loose in the city, taking out his rage on the criminal underworld.”
Bruce can’t hold back a snort. “A vampire? Really?”
Alfred nods seriously, but his eyes twinkle. “They’ve taken to calling him Batman.”
“Ironic,” Bruce says drily. His childhood terror of bats was immobilizing and persistent. It was only in the caves of the League of Assassins that he discovered there were many worse things than bats living in this world. Hopefully, Alfred never finds out about that year, though Bruce knows he suspects something close to the truth.
Suddenly a new thought hits him. If bats were such a horror to his own decently level-headed self… he leans forward. “Alfred,” he says, “how difficult would it be to modify my mask and cape a little? I’m also considering some kind of symbol on the chest plate. Something subtle.”
Alfred’s lips turn up at the corners in Bruce’s favorite mischievous smirk. “I have just the thing, Sir.”
…
Batman flies over the streets of Gotham, rescuing kidnappees, punching thieves, and delivering all manner of murderers and vermin to the police. The criminals sometimes make out the ears and cape in the darkness and know that if they’re lucky the Vampire Bat of Gotham will not suck their blood dry tonight for their families to find in the morning. But the most prominent symbol, the one that eventually lights up the sky when the city is in need of assistance, is the yellow bat symbol emblazoned across his chest.
Bruce looks down at it every time he dons the suit and is never sure whether to scowl or laugh.
Alfred thinks it’s hilarious. Bruce decides on a scowl.