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The drive over the Robert Kane bridge was meditative, in its way. An always-appreciated privilege. The image of it in pieces was still etched in Alfred’s memory, the shattered span that kept him from his child. For two years he’d stared at that thing, the broken edifice mocking him on either side of the water. The reconstructed version was, perhaps, less elegant than the original had been. It scarcely mattered. It was whole, and that was all anyone ever really required of a bridge.
Behind him, through the bonds, he felt the Manor beginning to stir. Well, he said ‘beginning’. The Manor was always stirring, in fits and starts. At the moment, for example, Master Bruce was just stirring, conscious but not exactly sentient just yet. Master Damian had been awake some hours, ferociously concentrating on some project or other. Master Tim was only just going to bed, and not before time either. Eleven in the morning. Honestly.
Master Jason and Mistress Cassandra had been out and about before he was. Both in the city somewhere ahead of him. Miss Barbara, he thought, was still in her apartment. She was about as sentient as Master Bruce at present, and would require a considerable amount of caffeine to surface the rest of the way. Her father was more alert, already in work, at present calm and focused. Master Dick, further afield, sensed the faint brush of Alfred’s attention, and sent a wave of cheerful greeting down the bond. Leslie, on the other hand, was firmly allied with those recently conscious and distinctly regretting it, and declined to acknowledge much of anything.
He feathered lightly over all of them. Just the faintest brush of attention, a reflexive check-in. The habit of years. Just over sixteen years, to be precise. And that … that number. That was the reason for his excursion this morning. Sixteen years. Sixteen.
As opposed to eighteen. Or longer.
He felt Gotham reach up to envelop him as he passed the midway mark on the bridge. Perhaps a little bit further. She always reached just that fraction further over this bridge than the others, Trigate or Brown. Because of what the Kane bridge pointed to, he assumed. Because of who it pointed to.
His hands flexed lightly on the wheel. The faintest physical hint of turmoil. He’d chosen this hour of the morning quite deliberately. They’d all be muzzy. His family, his clan. Climbing out of sleep or heading into it, focused on their own affairs. And therefore less focused on his.
An underhanded tactic, one that few would be capable of. Few had such access, such understanding, to be able to judge when they’d all be weakest. Less focused. Only family would be capable of it. Yes. A distinctly underhanded tactic, all right. But Alfred … had need of a conversation. And less prying ears and hearts to pay attention to it.
He faltered a little, once over the bridge. Uncertain where to go. Not necessarily the best idea in Gotham traffic, particularly at this end of the island, but Alfred had decades of experience with combat driving in a variety of vehicles and locales. Defensive driving was near enough instinct at this point. No one looking at his carefully ordinary car would be able to sense his indecision.
Where did one go, to try and have a conversation like this? In theory anywhere on the island, but …
After a moment’s thought, he turned left onto Park, down the boundary between Burnley and the Alley, heading for the Sprang and beyond it, to the Upper East Side. He could feel Jason to his left, somewhere within the Alley’s bounds. A part of him winced, as always. An echo. The boy had been born there. Had lived there for over a decade before Bruce found him. Alfred did understand. The Alley was more than the site of a thirty year old crime. It was a home, too, and to Jason in particular as much a home as the Manor was. But Alfred winced, regardless. Restrained the ever-present urge to retrieve him.
For him, the knowledge of a child in the Alley, one of his children, would forever be marred by the memory of blood.
He hid it successfully, as always. Not a twitch through the bond. Jason barely noted he was there before Alfred was already on the smaller bridge over the Sprang, and then only enough to send the empathic equivalent of a grunt of acknowledgement his way. Alfred returned the sensation, more delicately, and left the boy to his business. As he went to his.
His destination was tucked into a newly-renovated section of the Upper East Side. A lot of this part of the city had come down completely during the quake, and had been almost completely rebuilt in the aftermath. Fifteen years ago it had all been shiny and new. It wasn’t anymore. A comfortable patina of use and grime had settled back over it, Gotham reclaiming the efforts to modernise. But a small, small section, Alfred’s destination, have avoided the efforts altogether.
The boneyard, the islanders called it. No Man’s Land’s graveyard. They’d chosen one of the completely flattened sections to put it in, keep it away from where people were still trying to live and work and exist. Leslie, ever conscious of disease. They’d put the dead somewhere, at the time, unused. And afterwards, while the city rebuilt, that plot of land and the ones cleared of rubble around it, had been kept for that newer, grimmer purpose.
Some effort had been made to make it look better, Alfred thought, as he pulled into the new parking lot across the street, one of those areas that the graveyard had claimed regardless of the new administration’s thoughts on the matter. There were walls around the place, now. A well-made wrought-iron gate, one that matched many of the older cemeteries throughout the city. Alfred didn’t usually come here. Most of those he had lost were buried elsewhere, and … he hadn’t been in the city those two years. Coming here was not his place. But once … Jason had been interred here. He’d come then.
He wasn’t sure precisely why he was here now. Why this, of all places, was what he’d chosen. But perhaps …
Perhaps he thought that speaking to a goddess was much like speaking to the dead.
He took a careful breath. Made sure to steady himself. It wouldn’t do for any of his family to sense his distress. Even as muzzy as they were, they might react to it. So. Steady as she goes. Stiff upper lip. A stereotype, to be sure, but one with merit.
And price. But then, that was why he was here.
He opened the door and climbed to his feet, straightening his woollen coat. It wasn’t raining, for once. A beautiful clear morning. He shouldn’t be faintly annoyed by that. It happened rarely enough in Gotham, you’d think he’d be grateful. But rain might have afforded a little bit more privacy.
Oh well. He locked the car and made his way across the street regardless. The car should be safe enough. The Upper East Side wasn’t the Alley. And even in the Alley, someone would have to be very, very desperate before they robbed someone heading to the boneyard. This place commanded … a certain respect. As did the dead, all by their lonesome.
Inside the gate, he faltered again. Unsure where to go. He had an urge to tuck his gloved hands into his coat pockets, and restrained it harshly. An echo of childhood. Don’t be so casual, so disrespectful, in the place of the dead. Alfred grimaced faintly and …
Turned left. The familiar path. Towards a now-empty grave.
This was, perhaps, not entirely the best idea. Coming here. Too many things tangled together here. Too many wounds. But instinct had brought him, so let’s see what instinct wrought. There were reasons, after all. All the tangled reasons. Jason, the child they’d lost, had been buried here.
And Bruce, the child he could have lost … might have been. Those two and a half years. If he’d died. Out here, across that broken bridge, where Alfred couldn’t reach him. He’d have been buried here. Where Alfred … couldn’t visit.
And Alfred, had that happened, would not have known. Depending on when it had happened. Later, once they had communications set up and regularised, yes, someone would have told him. But at the beginning. Those first, horrific months of quarantine, before the alliances had been set up, and people like Jim, like Leslie, knew who Bruce was and all the arrangements he’d made. If Bruce had died then, with no one to know the radio frequency for the cave. Then Alfred would never have known.
The silence would have told him, eventually. The lack of contact. He would have guessed. But he’d have held out hope. All those two and a half years. Hoped it was only a broken radio, despite knowing in his heart it was more than that.
His … heart. Not his aura. Because …
He stopped. Not quite to Jason’s grave. Alfred stopped dead on the gravel path, carefully evening his aura out. Swallowing his anguish. Careful, careful. Don’t let the family feel.
It was why he hadn’t … Why he hadn’t bonded with Bruce. Before. After. After them, Thomas and Martha, and before it. Her. No Man’s Land. Gotham. Don’t let them feel your pain. It’s not your place. Doesn’t the poor boy have enough to deal with? He doesn’t need to feel you … feel you grieve …
And it would have been wrong. Stepping into the holes they’d left behind. Presuming. He’d. He’d thought it would have been wrong. Propriety. Stiff upper lip. He’d thought it wasn’t his place.
So Bruce had come here, all of eighteen, into a war zone, and Alfred …
For two years, Alfred had had no way to feel if his child lived or died.
It had only been after. When the quarantine ended. When Bruce had come back. No more a boy, in any sense of the word, and already a man. A man with bonds already. Jim. Leslie. Those who’d claimed him, or rather accepted him, before Alfred could gather the courage. Only then. Out of joy and grief and dizzy, dizzy relief, had Alfred … reached. Asked.
And Bruce had wept, and pulled him straight in. As if. As if he’d been waiting years.
Jason’s grave was still empty. The name had been removed. A polite fiction for the civic government of Gotham. Paperwork changed and explanations distinctly lacking. Resurrection was not typically something the government had a lot of understanding for, which for once, one issue, Alfred couldn’t entirely blame them. So the headstone was gone, and the grave re-excavated, removing the mess left … in the wake of a stolen body. A stolen son. Just a clean, tidy pit. An empty grave.
Empty of Jason. And empty of Bruce.
Alfred breathed carefully. Caved to desire and hid his gloved hands in his coat pockets, to hide the way they clenched into fists. He took a moment, or closer to several moments, to simply … Pull himself together. As best he could. And … speak.
“You will forgive me, my dear,” he murmured. Low, as though speaking to graves. The way he talked to Thomas and Martha, when he visited them. “Lady Gotham? I find myself uncertain how one addresses a goddess. Or … whether or not you can hear me, for that matter.”
Princess Diana’s intercession had thrown them all for a loop. The council, pack, had been listening in on Bruce’s conversation. The Manor was rigged in certain areas, and he had guided her to one of them. Privacy was well and good, but they needed to know if she decided to kill him. And, given that she spoke for the League, or usually spoke for the League, if apparently not on this occasion, the council had needed to know what their intent might be. So. They’d listened in.
And heard … Well. A lot. Alfred would need to speak with his boy on certain things, yet again. Gotham would go on if Batman died, would it? Well. Maybe Gotham would. The family, however, most certainly would not.
Eventually, yes. They’d lost before, and would lose again, much as they fought to stave it off. They would go on eventually. But not … not in the short term. Not in the immediate.
And Alfred, perhaps, not at all.
Regardless. That part of the conversation had not been a shock. A longstanding issue, let’s say. It had been Princess Diana’s comment that had put the cat among the pigeons, so to speak.
That the itch in the aura that everyone felt in the city, the sensation coming across the bridge, was an aura. The way people had auras, or at least mostly the way people had auras. The city was a person. A … goddess, if the daughter of Greek goddesses was to be believed.
Jason had radiated … delighted smugness. Instantly, immediately. A thick, fierce, vicious sort of pride. He’d known. Or guessed. Cobblepot, apparently, had also been quite satisfied by the declaration, though Alfred had had to ascertain that reaction visibly rather than by aura. And Bruce … Bruce had been closer to stunned. A vast, hollow relief. A dazed joy.
The rest of the pack, like Alfred, had been more ambiguous. More confused. He’d felt the itch before, yes, and knew the others had too, but it hadn’t … It hadn’t felt to them as it had to those three. It hadn’t been a person. Not the way they, apparently, had known, felt, that it was a person. A … An entity. A goddess. Alfred knew Gotham had an effect on the aura. He hadn’t been aware that it was because it had its own. Her. Her own.
But. Now that he did. Several other things, realisations, had … slotted into place.
He sat down carefully. The curb around the edge of the path, one of those things the city had dressed up in the years since the quarantine. And he felt … He thought he felt. Now that he was looking for it. Waiting for it. He thought he felt that vast, strange aura bend towards him. Listen in.
How does one address a goddess? How? But, well. He’d come to the graveyard. Let’s try this as if talking to Thomas or Martha.
“He’s felt you, hasn’t he,” he murmured softly. A sad old man in a graveyard, talking to thin air. “All these years. Bruce. Jason. Cobblepot. They’ve felt you, in a way the rest of us haven’t. Not … Not long for Jason. I think I’m correct in that. Only since he returned to us. But the others. Bruce and Oswald. They’ve … They’ve felt you for some time, haven’t they?”
It wasn’t really a question. He knew. In hindsight, he knew. He’d … felt. Because …
“You bonded with them,” he said. Voiced it out loud. “Those three. It’s not that they can simply feel your aura. It’s a bond. You bonded with them. Didn’t you?”
He was listening for it. Feeling for it. The only reason. But … the aura moved. That vast aura. A silver shiver across his own. And he felt, more than heard, a gentle shiver of yes. Yes. She had bonded with them. Bound their auras to hers.
He’d … He’d already known. As he would have known if Bruce died, those two and a half years, even if he couldn’t have felt. In his heart, he’d already known.
It did not, remotely, stop the wave of grief and pain and … other things. Less salubrious things. At the confirmation. Jealousy. Shame. Perhaps more than anything else. Shame.
He felt her curiosity for it. Felt her, in her turn, listening in. Watching the squall through his aura. He tamped it quickly. Wrestled it back, so his family wouldn’t feel. But she saw. She curled curiously around him. Perhaps, he imagined, poking silver claws gently towards his wounds.
Because they were. Wounds. Oh, they very much were.
“… I’m not sure you’ll understand,” he said softly. He wished he had a headstone to look at, as he did with Thomas and Martha. Thin air was less comforting. Madness was very much a thing in this city, after all, and Alfred had trembled on its brink a time or two before. Speaking to thin air did not reassure. He turned his head. Addressed the grave, instead. A morbid thing, perhaps, but he thought she was likely a morbid goddess. Perhaps she would understand that part at least. “Perhaps you think I don’t have much right to these feelings. What business is it of mine who … who my boy choses to bond with. Especially when …”
When Alfred hadn’t. Not for all those years. The shattered remnant of Bruce’s childhood, after his parents had been ripped from him. Those angry, pained teenage years. And Alfred had known. Bruce’s aura was quite apparent, even when it had been younger and so very much smaller. It had still been very much a pack aura. An aura that wanted, needed bonds. Never reaching, not without permission, but always ready. Welcoming. Yearning.
Yet Alfred had held himself aloof regardless. He’d … felt he had to. Or no. That was cowardice talking, as it had been cowardice then. He’d been too afraid to. Too afraid that he wouldn’t be enough for the weight of the boy’s grief. Afraid it would be a betrayal of his friends, to usurp their place with their son. Afraid that Bruce would rely on him, and that Alfred wouldn’t be able to live up to what he needed. Afraid to show …
To show his own grief. His own pain. He still struggled with that. Why else choose this time of morning to come out here? So his family wouldn’t feel.
They were so scarred. So wounded. How could he ask them to bear his own scars, his own grief, as well? A parent should not burden their child. Nor a man who was never meant to be a parent, either. It hadn’t … It hadn’t been his place. He’d thought, for so many years, that it hadn’t been his place. Still thought it. In … so many ways.
“… I have no right,” he whispered. To her. This figment in the air. This aura that had never felt like a person, not until you knew. “I have no right to be angry at you. To hate you. I never offered. All those years when I should have been there for him, I never was. I have no right to hate you for reaching him first. For … giving him what I could not.”
He’d been angry at the others. Jim. Leslie. After No Man’s Land. Even when he shouldn’t have been, when it was his own fault, when perhaps Bruce wouldn’t have survived without them. Not in soul. He’d still been … angry. Jealous. Afraid. Commissioner Gordon hadn’t noticed, Alfred’s aura well trained in subtlety. Leslie had. They’d … had words. Had alcohol. She’d done her best to both berate and comfort him through it. She was … always good for that. A better friend than any man could ask. And she hadn’t told Bruce, which was … a true mercy. Alfred would never have been able to explain.
He still couldn’t. He was still sneaking out behind the boy’s back, rather than explain it to him. Explain why he’d left him to grieve. And …
To be wounded. Not just No Man’s Land, though those two years were etched most desperately in Alfred’s memory. Before that, too. Bruce had never said. He’d learned too well from Alfred. He’d never said. But Alfred had known. In his heart, if not the details. Before ever No Man’s Land gutted him, Bruce had been wounded. Those years travelling as a teenager. He’d … found something out there. Been scarred by it. Been …
Damian. Damian had been born from something. Someone. And Alfred knew his son. Bruce would not. If he’d loved her, he’d have bonded with her. There would have been a bond. And he’d not have left his child behind. Not if he’d known.
Someone had … Alfred flinched from the word. Even in his own head. Someone had raped his son. Out there. And Alfred, again, hadn’t known. He wouldn’t have felt if Bruce died. And he hadn’t felt Bruce be … be wounded. In that manner. He hadn’t felt it.
All because of cowardice, and propriety, and all those other things that had seemed so important back then. All those reasons that were really just excuses. He hadn’t felt.
He … He hoped the boy hadn’t felt. Damian. When he’d arrived. He hoped the child hadn’t felt the rush of … of fury, of revulsion through Alfred’s aura as he realised … what the boy’s existence had to mean. What must have been done. Fortunately, god— goddess forgive him for thinking it, but fortunately Jason’s return, the shock of it, had hopefully covered a lot of emotional sins. A parent, or … or grandparent in this case, should not burden their children. Alfred desperately hoped the boy hadn’t felt. It had been no crime of his.
No. No, the crime had been Alfred’s. Whoever it was that had harmed Bruce, yes, also those, but Alfred too. He’d … chosen not to know. He’d chosen not to feel.
And so someone else, several someones, had taken his place. James Gordon. Leslie Thompkins. And …
Gotham. The city. The goddess.
She curled around him. Perhaps he was imagining it. He didn’t know how to read a goddess, no more than he knew how to speak to one. Heathen idolatry. If his parents, or his pastor, could see him now, he’d already be black and blue. But Alfred thought he felt her. And not … not vicious. Not angry. No rage at his presumption, even when he spoke of hating her. Instead, she threaded her aura through his, and he thought …
He thought he felt something not unlike sympathy. A savage, burning sympathy.
Alfred pressed his eyes shut. Tucked his chin into his chest. Fought … Fought his reactions down. The feelings. His family would feel them if he kept on like this. He tried to tuck them down, tuck them away. But she.
She pushed in. Pushed through him. Curled … around his bonds. To Bruce. To his family. Alfred felt a surge of terror, but she only pressed invisibly against his chest. Seeped over the bonds like a mist. As if promising …
As if promising to hide them. As if promising they wouldn’t feel.
A little noise escaped him. Not quite a sob, not quite a cry. He … He remembered Bruce crying like this. Trying to be silent. For years and years and years. He fought it. Fought it desperately. But her aura was tucked around his, the first shield Alfred had felt since … he didn’t know … and suddenly all the grief, the rage and pain and uncertainty, just wrenched their way out of him. Ripped free, vicious and ugly, and he was sobbing. Hard, stifled. Muffled by his palms. Sitting on a curb stone by an empty grave.
He’d cried like this then too. After Thomas and Martha. Just like Bruce, at opposite ends of the house. They’d wept, and done their best to hide that they were weeping.
He felt her. The way Bruce must feel her. A stained silver, a clawed viciousness, curled fierce and savage around his soul. She tucked her claws around his wounds. Not to tear. To keep the safe. The sympathy was savage, yes. Burning. It whispered of murder, vengeance, the blood of those who had wounded them upon the stones. Alfred should be terrified. A goddess, Diana had said, but a dark goddess, if so. A murderous one. He should be petrified. But …
Who else could look on this sort of ugliness without a qualm? Alfred’s grief wasn’t beautiful. It wasn’t clean or laudable or kind. It wasn’t justified. Petty failings, petty jealousies. His own fault. Who else but someone who knew could look on that without a qualm?
And that … that was the danger. Always. Sympathy, acceptance, did not guarantee kindness. She could look on his grief without a qualm. That didn’t mean she wouldn’t use it.
As she might have used a grieving child.
Because this, too, Alfred had suspected. As soon as he’d known she was a person. As soon as he’d realised it had to be a bond. He’d suspected. Because while Alfred hadn’t had one, all those years, hadn’t lowered himself to offer his son that much, he’d still known Bruce. Every eddy of his wounded aura, for years on end.
And the thing of it was, while his aura had been changed by No Man’s Land, by whatever had happened out there in the world that Alfred had missed, it had changed substantially …
She’d already been there. Now that Alfred knew what she was. Now that he knew to look, to feel. Bruce’s aura had been torn open when the quarantine had finally come down. Cut to ribbons, scarred, massively enlarged. A vast thing, a changed thing. New bonds, to Jim, to Leslie, shining among the tears. But this. This feeling. This stained silver. Alfred had never registered it as a separate thing, never registered it as a bond. Because it had already been there.
It had been there since … the night they died. Thomas and Martha. It had been there since he’d found Bruce still covered in their blood, sitting in an ambulance. His tiny aura …
Ripped open. Then as later. But that time. Then. Alfred had known the cause.
Bruce had been bonded to them. His parents. It wasn’t always done. It wasn’t even often done. Timothy spoke to that. Bonds were … a complicated matter. Not always considered appropriate. Barbarous, indecorous. Children didn’t need to feel … Well. They didn’t need to know all their parents’ failings. But Thomas and Martha, the latter in particular, wouldn’t countenance anything else. They’d loved him. To the blood, to the bone. Martha hadn’t been able to imagine doing anything else.
And as a result … he’d felt them die. Bruce. He’d. He’d felt it. The bonds had been ripped out by the roots, left his aura gaping, torn all the way open. And Alfred hadn’t realised it, hadn’t noticed except in hindsight, but something else had crept in. Anchored through the wounds. A city. A goddess.
She felt the change. Still curled around him where he sat weeping. Gotham felt the shift in Alfred’s aura. The rising stir of … not hate, this. Not petty, not at all. Something much, much surer.
Bruce had always had qualms about killing. He’d felt death that night, felt it to the soul, and a part of him since could never bear it. Not to be the cause of it. It was another thing that … that Alfred had wanted to hide from him. Had wanted not to show. Because if he’d been there that night. Before or after. If he’d seen the man who slaughtered two of the finest people Alfred had known in all the world. If he’d seen the man who left Bruce torn.
Alfred would have killed him without so much as a second thought.
And he felt … much the same now. Could a man kill a goddess? A question he had never imagined himself asking, having cause to ask. But suddenly pertinent. Suddenly necessary.
“… It was that night, wasn’t it?” he asked softly. Steadily, still into his palms. There was wariness, suddenly. He wondered if it was hubristic to feel a rush of pride. He’d made a goddess wary. Pride surged, and fury, and depthless grief. “The night they died. You chose him then. You touched him then.”
Auras torn open. She’d bonded with Jason after he’d come back. The wreckage of all their torn bonds in his chest. And Alfred couldn’t swear to Cobblepot, Oswald, but if ever a man, an omega, carried himself like some part of him had been ripped out once upon a time … Alfred would believe it, let’s say. The man knew how to protect against it. The way … The way Alfred had protected against it for years. By just not having any.
There might be a scar, somewhere under Penguin’s aura. Remnant of a ripped bond. Alfred would believe that. And once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, third is enemy action.
The broken and the torn. That was who she picked, this dark goddess. The wounded and the lost. And one of them was Alfred’s son. Two of them, now. If she meant them harm by it. If she had taken advantage, in order to use them. To have pretty soldiers to die for her cause. Then Alfred had no idea if a man could kill a goddess, but by god, whatever damned god proved necessary, he would fucking try.
He had failed Bruce a hundred times. A thousand. Too much a coward to give a grieving child what he needed. Too tied to propriety to notice when someone savaged him. The least he could do, after so many mistakes, was stop making them.
This time … This time he would be there. This time he would fight.
And she felt it. This dark goddess, this city who had won, or perhaps stolen, Alfred’s son, body and soul. She felt his rising fury, his stained determination. All the depths of his love, perhaps, all the depths of his shame. The damned determination that followed in their wake. For their cause. If Alfred could not save his son’s stolen soul, his sons’, win them back from a dark goddess, then he would die trying. He felt that. And she felt him feel it.
And in response …
A shattered stillness. For a long, long second. And then …
She poured into him. Enough to overwhelm. To drown. To terrify. She poured down into his aura, and for a breathless second Alfred thought she was trying to kill him. To eat him, as apparently she’d eaten the Joker. He had weightless moment of blind terror, where he thought he was going to die.
And then …
Her. It took an endless moment to grasp it. To understand. She filled him. He felt her. Her … Her memories? Her … truth.
Blind. Broken. Bleeding. Maddened and crazed. Blind in the darkness. Full of blood, full of screaming. She’d been shattered. Before ever the quake hit. Fully torn open. Full of hate. Rage and grief and wrenching, clawing pain.
And she’d … reached. Up. For the ones that echoed her. The auras within her grasp that felt as she felt. Blood on the stones. She’d reached for those bleeding. A little boy in his parents’ blood. A teenager dying down the docks. Others, here or there. Not everyone had listened. Not everyone had reached back.
But she’d been too broken. Too weak. She hadn’t been able to help them, beyond feeding strength and fury upwards when they faltered. When … When people wounded them. She’d. She’d felt it. What happened to Bruce. She had been there. Alfred brushed the echo of it in her aura, the staggered sickness, the weakness, the dazed acceptance. His stomach, somewhere behind him in his crumpled body, lurched. And he felt her fury for it. Her helpless rage. Always broken, always bleeding. She’d chosen those like her. She hadn’t entirely meant to feel it.
And then … the quake. Something had torn. Something massive. Light flooded down where she lay bleeding. Meta … Metaphorical light. Alfred thought. He couldn’t exactly be sure. Something had changed. She’d felt power. Some rush of it. And she’d …
Called him home. Bruce. To her, away from those who wounded him. She’d called him back. Still too weak to help. Too weak to speak to him. But she’d called him. She’d called her chosen home.
There’d been something wrong. After the quake, during No Man’s Land. She’d been woken, yes, stirred, given some strange rush of power, but something had felt … strained. Divided. Tied down? She’d felt split in two, torn between two things. She’d raged. Wanted blood, wanted destruction. Lashed against her bonds. Felt something, someone, die for it. Maybe several someones. She’d been too dazed, and them too tiny, for her to be sure. But then Bruce …
Alfred could feel him. As she felt him. His battered, wounded, shining boy. Trying to help. Bruce had always been trying to help. It was why Alfred had hid from him, all those years. Hidden his own grief, his own pain. Because Bruce would have tried to help. But she hadn’t known to hide. And he’d just … poured himself outwards. Out over the whole city. Her chosen. Her child. Protecting her.
What was meant to be destruction became cooperation. What was meant to be blood became … hope. Fragile, tenuous, forever on the verge of destruction, but fought for. Every moment of every day. Against every wound, through every pain. Not just Bruce, but her other chosen too. Cobblepot, as vicious, as bloody, much more like her, more willing to eat, but willing then to follow Bruce’s lead. To strive for something else. More. Not just survival, but a city. A people. She’d been maddened. In pain. Wanting only to eat. But those auras had flowered inside her grasp. Stubborn, vicious, hopeful auras. Reaching to each other, reaching to her. Stay alive. Fuck the lot of them. We’ll stay alive. Hold on. We’ll make it work.
And they had. The hard, bloody, vicious way. The gentlest way they knew how. While Alfred sat across a broken bridge, fighting sacks of shit for the money to pour across the gap, they’d fought. They’d made it work. And she …
She rushed down through him. This vicious, bloodied thing, this murderess, this dark goddess. She poured herself through his aura. And Alfred felt …
Devotion. Adoration. For them. Her chosen. Her people. Every scrabbling, ugly soul within her shores. The thing in his head pulled something up between silver claws. A lump, a bloodied lump. A heart. She grinned ferociously at him, at his promise to kill her if she hurt his boy, and she laid the battered, bloodied lump that was her heart at his feet. A silent, echoing promise. Exactly the same.
Kill anyone who touches them. Eat anyone who touches them. She’d been too weak before. Broken and bleeding in the dark. But something had made her stronger. Years. Years of their efforts had made her stronger. She’d reached for anyone who’d reach back, reached for anyone who’d know the blood and the agony, and she’d found …
Light. Ugly, bloodied, stubborn, broken, but light. Determination. Hope. And she’d reached for that, and it had. It had reached back. They’d accepted her bonds. Poured their love and vicious devotion right back.
If she had to die to keep them safe. If she had to fight gods and monsters and everything in between. If she had to eat the world. She would. Without question or qualm. She would.
Alfred’s breath hitched. Hissed between his teeth. She was … too much. Too big. A broken thing he could barely grasp the edges of. But he wondered now. Just on the edges of his thoughts. He wondered if Bruce, unwittingly, unknowingly, never once meaning to, had … If Bruce had taken advantage of her. Not. Not on purpose. But.
She’d been screaming, and he’d answered. And loyalty born of debt wasn’t always …
But she laughed at the thought. Seeing it. Feeling it. She eased back from him. Pulled back from his aura, feathered her claws more gently across him. And Alfred felt … the echoes of her promises. The softer ones. Less bloodied. She loved them. Not loyalty, not debt. Love. If they hurt her she would forgive them. If she hurt them she would never forgive herself. But she would try to do better. As … As any parent should.
His own grief swam back up. His own pain, shame. And she curled around him. Gently. And whispered echoes of Bruce across his aura. Forgiveness. Unthinking, unreasoning. Her knowledge that … that his child loved him. Bruce. That Bruce loved him. And would forgive him anything.
He shouldn’t. The hard knot of knowledge pulsed in Alfred’s throat. Bruce shouldn’t forgive him some things. But he knew she was right. His own bond, and hers. He knew Bruce did. As Jason forgave Bruce, in his turn. Dick, Tim. Perhaps Damian. As … they all forgave. Bloodied and vicious and holding grudges between their teeth, but still …
For family. For pack. For Gotham. They … forgave. Even if they likely shouldn’t.
The grief swam back up. The pain. The wonder. Desperate bloodied love. And she curled him close, and whispered yes. Just like that. Bloodied and awful and ugly and precious. Just like that.
He was lying on the path in a graveyard. Vaguely, distantly, he was conscious of that. Somewhere, propriety stirred to admonish him. This was his good coat. He was lying in a heap on the floor, in public, with not even rain to grant a hint of privacy. Some part of him twinged. Decades of habit and training and hammered lessons. But she curled around him. And this was Gotham. This was the boneyard. Where madness was a common thing, and grief allowed free rein. She’d kept his bonds safe. Hadn’t let his family feel his anguish. And beyond that, perhaps, he didn’t care for propriety the ways he once had. At least, not when weighed against anything else.
Family. Love. A broken child, who reached for you when they shouldn’t. A broken parent. Who finally, belatedly, reached back.
They will not touch him again, she whispered. Comfort for a broken man who hadn’t been able to feel his child wounded, his child die. They won’t touch him again. I will eat them.
And, well. Alfred did try not to let Bruce know. Not to let him feel. His boy, who’d learned death too savagely. But Alfred … had no problems with that. None whatsoever.
The grave behind him was empty. His boys, both his boys, weren’t buried yet. Jason had been, briefly, and Bruce might have been, and every moment Dick spent outside the city, every moment he dallied with people who might hurt him as Bruce had been hurt, had Alfred hoping that none of his family could feel, that his training and decorum held fast and they didn’t know, but the graves were still empty. Jason had come back. Bruce had come back. Dick hadn’t been wounded yet. He would cling to that. He had bonds, now. He’d be able to feel it. Never more those two years, those several years, left wondering and half-grieving in advance. He had them, now. He could feel them, now.
And if anyone touched them. As the lady said. The goddess. If anyone hurt them now.
He’d promised to try and kill a goddess. He certainly wouldn’t do any less for any mortal.
She … She reached for him. On the echo of it. Her aura was strange. Inhuman. Nothing Alfred recognised at all. But the way she reached … he recognised that. It was … The way Bruce had reached. For so many years. Careful. Hopeful. Hesitant. Waiting for disappointment. But reaching anyway. Regardless of the outcome.
Alfred hadn’t had a single bond in his life, before that day when Bruce came back from No Man’s Land. He hadn’t … It wasn’t decorous. It wasn’t suitable. It wasn’t his place. But. But.
He reached, and she reached back. Careful. Wondering. Vicious and ugly and beautiful. And curled her claws carefully through his soul.
What did it matter? Everyone he loved was hers anyway. And someone needed to keep a hint of sanity around this place.
Though he should probably get up off the ground, if that was the case. Straighten himself up. Head home to … to his family. All of them, all their fits and starts, all their raw edges and ugly pieces. All their unutterable, unutterable beauty.
The heart was a hideous, bloodied, battered thing. All of them, not just hers. But somehow, in spite of that, it was so very easy to love.
Right. Right. Enough of that, then. On your feet, Pennyworth. Straighten your coat. Go get the shopping. No one’s saving anyone if they can’t eat. Let’s just … pretend we didn’t collapse crying in a graveyard. That didn’t even have anyone in it. None of his, at least. Thankfully, thankfully, none of his.
And if there was another bond beside the others, now. A stained, silver thing, bloodied and vicious. Well.
That was no one’s business but Gotham’s.