Bruce Wainright has (onerule) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2014-02-13 16:08:00 |
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Entry tags: | alfred pennyworth, batman, door: dc comics |
Who: Bruce and Alfred
What: More sads and comfort.
Where: Wayne Manor.
When: Backdated to before Damian's funeral.
Warnings/Rating: Sads?
Days or weeks, he wasn’t sure, but Bruce knew he hadn’t left the Manor in a while. Not as himself, at least; the Bat made an odd appearance under the cover of darkness when he needed an outlet, when all the criminals he crossed paths with became Firefly and his violence went unchecked. But Bruce Wayne had all but disappeared, there were no functions or charity balls attended and he certainly didn’t go to work. He stayed in his room or in the Cave. Sleep was elusive, and simple things like eating didn’t seem very important anymore. In the back of his mind he knew Damian’s funeral couldn’t be avoided but he was doing just that, barely even giving it any thought, much less taking part in the arrangements. How the others were coping he wasn’t sure, but he hadn’t yet been able to find the strength to reach out and bridge the gap that Damian’s death had created between them.
His room was dark. Stifling. That was the only reason he ventured out, barefoot and in all black, a t-shirt and sweatpants, tired eyes and tousled hair. Down the stairs and wandering the halls aimlessly before he settled on a destination; the kitchen. There was no specific reason, really, he just sort of ended up there. Bright lights and he winced, but then he thought of coffee. Coffee, yes, and then perhaps he’d head down to the cave for a while. Less claustrophobic.
The kitchen table was covered in paper.
This was neither a normal state of affairs nor one Alfred encouraged. He was strongly minded that kitchens were for food, preparation and consumption thereof and that there were enough rooms in a Manor that took half a decade to clean if one went room by room that some other place might be found for paper. (All this was, all things being normal, communicated in a Look to whomever sat down and spread out said paper). However, the person sat behind the spread-out paper with his glasses slid half-way down his nose and a pad of legal paper to one side on which surprisingly neat and copperplate handwriting flowed, culminating in a neat stack of figures, was Alfred himself.
He did not enjoy funerals. He had avoided them as best he could for the better part of his career; the Armed Forces took a view that one attended, stiff upper lip as part of the required military dress, and that one did not express any feeling whatsoever beyond consolation of the remaining family. Alfred, where he could find the loophole, squeezed through and did not attend. Fallen comrades were best remembered with a pint in the local establishment or better yet, with recounting of tales of derring-do. A graveside was a poor place to remember anyone, not the least in winter. He had buried his father, and his former employers, he had attended the funeral of a woman he had held rather fondly in his heart when she had died from cancer and been as consolatory as he could to her now grieving husband and children, but all of them had been of an age where death was, if not expected, then at least confronted. Damian - Alfred’s face fell into the heavy, crumpled lines of age, regret and resignation - could have done neither. It was tragic, but - as was inevitable with all tragedies - practicalities had to be dealt with before feelings about them could truly be allowed to enmesh.
But Damian was not his son. He loved the boy by the mere extension of him being part of a family Alfred loved as simply and as truly as he might love his own father. He was sorrowful; the heavy look as he read through pamphlets that glossed over the reasoning for purchasing oak caskets, satin lined or the services of an establishment that would provide a wake, made this clear. But his worry had transferred obliquely to the man who would not come out of the darkness, whom he feared never would. The door opened, and Alfred looked up and the glasses tumbled to the table, the chair skidded back on tile.
“Sir,” Alfred said. It was loaded with worry, with surprise, with warm affection and with at least a small amount of pleasure to see him outside the confines of the stifling room.
Bruce didn’t look at the papers, despite the fact that they were all over the kitchen. From his peripheral vision he was aware of their presence, as he was aware of what they signified-- a reality he persisted in refusing to face. Under different circumstances he was extremely practical but when it came to Damian and what needed to be taken care of, well, it was fortunate Alfred was level-headed enough to take care of the necessary arrangements, otherwise they might not have been taken care of at all. He kept his gaze low, just above the floor, walking a path he could have navigated blind and it was only when Alfred spoke that he stopped. So far, he’d done a remarkably good job of avoiding everyone, but he’d known upon deciding to leave his room that human contact was a possibility. Had it been anyone else in the kitchen he would have backtracked and left but Alfred was like a father to him, the one person who knew him better than anyone else alive. Avoiding him, yes, that he could do. Turning his back? No, that he wasn’t capable of no matter how much pain he was in.
Still avoiding the papers strewn about, he lifted his gaze. “Alfred.” His voice was rusty from disuse and he didn’t smile, but it was something. “I was--” He paused, took a breath. “Looking for coffee.” Part of him wanted to ask, to inquire about funeral plans, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to formulate the words.
Bruce had never been good at managing his own health. Alfred could recall a protracted bout of flu that had gone on weeks before he had been neatly ordered into his own bed and the little devices, steely bits of tech Alfred didn’t necessarily understand (nor wish to) taken away until his humanity was permitted to assert itself over the mystery of the man and begin the mundane task of actually healing. In part, Bruce allowing grief to assert itself over the routine of being more than who he was, was significant. He was permitting it to happen as he did not and had not since he had been the small and shellshocked little boy Alfred felt had only been yesterday. But this grief was all-consuming and - most importantly - exclusive. The children (for Alfred thought of all of them as children with poor impulse control, they were all so young) needed him as much as he needed them. Without him, they would oscillate in their own grieving, individuals broken on a network. Without them? Alfred doubted Bruce would permit connection again.
“Coffee is where it has always been, Master Bruce,” tonally, Alfred was no different, the warmth and rough affection of a man who had long ago stepped across the line of ‘family retainer’ to consider himself as part of the family proper. “You’re in luck, I made a pot not half an hour ago. Sit down.” It was not a suggestion, Bruce was not going to take a cup and return to the isolation in which, Alfred very much feared, he berated himself for whatever had brought about Damian’s death. He rose, leaving the papers at his own seat and his spectacles lying atop the pad, and moved through the kitchen with the confidence of a man who spent much of every day using it to its full extent.
For a brief moment Bruce was disoriented, simply because the coffee had largely been an excuse for his aimless wandering. But then he recovered, took a breath, and nodded. Yes, he would get a cup of coffee and leave Alfred to his papers-- except he was being told to sit, and when it came from the older man his instinct was to comply. He hesitated, casting a glance over his shoulder before slowly sitting down. He didn’t look at the papers. He stared down at his knees, shoulders hunched as though attempting to draw in on himself.
Alfred released a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. Bruce was rarely biddable; he had been that way as a small boy but in growing to manhood, he had acquired a competency and confidence that implied suggestion was the way forward. Bidding him do anything at all redrew the relationship upon the old, grayed lines beyond that rainy day in Gotham and Alfred felt the weight of it fall, pendulum-sure. He placed a hand on the cottoned shoulder, and squeezed briefly - almost absently, before puttering toward the sleek fixtures of the kitchen. Without a hint of guilt, he tossed the last of the previous pot down the sink; there. Master Bruce would have to remain outside his room a whole five minutes longer while the preparations were made.
“I took the liberty,” Alfred said across one shoulder, “Of commencing the arrangements.” His tone imparted gravity, the solemnity of warmth frozen over, grave-hard. Delicately, “It is good to see you up and about, Master Bruce.”
Numbness was an effective armor but this time, with Damian, he hadn’t managed to equip himself as well as he had in the past. Bruce felt the hand on his shoulder more strongly than he would have liked, and his breath caught in his throat when he tried to breathe. Inhale, exhale. He had a tenuous grasp on calm but he persisted until his breathing evened out again and he could stop digging his fingers into his knees. Because he didn’t look up, he failed to notice that Alfred was intentionally stalling to keep him in the kitchen longer. Looking at the papers wouldn’t change anything at all, no more than not looking at them would, but he felt somehow that acknowledging their presence was accepting a reality he still would rather not face at all.
The mention of arrangements undermined his deliberate ignorance. He could pretend he hadn’t heard, or that he had no idea what he was referring to. The problem was, however, that Alfred was the one person he couldn’t pretend with because he saw right through him and made that fact quite clear. He kept focusing on his breathing. “Thank you,” he managed. Acknowledgement without pursuing the details. As for being up and about, he lifted his gaze a fraction and gave a small nod.
The coffee took time. It was excellent, but the machine was slow. Alfred thought - in lighter moments, that it was designed to ensure whomever required excellent coffee had the time in which to truly enjoy it, the precious seconds required for the machine to do what it did draining all remaindering thoughts down to a trickle. With the machine primed, he turned his back to the sink and the counter and toward the man who was trying desperately to retain a handle on his facade of calm. Alfred sometimes, in weaker moments, thought privately that the Waynes had a great deal to answer for if a man wasn’t occasionally allowed recourse to emotion in public.
He returned to Bruce’s side and relaid his hand on Bruce’s shoulder, a light squeeze. “I know it has been awful. We are all mourning.” All. He had not seen many of the younger folk since they had taken off like scattered rabbits, the death of one of their own like a repellent electrical charge. He wondered if they would come together without Bruce, or if the disparate parts lacked all cohesion without the young man who was now no longer able to stubbornly insist upon unison. “But there is comfort to be found in grieving together, Master Bruce.”
Awful. Yes, it had been awful. Bruce swallowed down his guilt at Alfred’s use of we, another reminder that there were others he had neglected in his own grief. He almost wished, in his darker moments, that he was alone, that he could mourn privately without being the patriarch of a family in as much pain as he was. Selfish as it might have been, he didn’t want the responsibility of holding them together. Not then. And such thoughts just worsened his guilt, an endless cycle he couldn’t escape. “Comfort?” He repeated the word as though he’d never heard it before, bitter on his tongue. He drew his gaze upward, away from the papers. “What comfort, Alfred?” It wasn’t a derisive or scornful question; it was genuine, laced with confusion.
Alfred did not show a great deal of wear. He had the kind of face that wore the same wrinkles as every other day, the same sense of having seen a great deal and surprised by little of it and even when excessively tired and dispirited, he showed it little. It was somehow present, if looked for. The creases at the sides of his mouth and the softly saggy skin beneath his eyes were worn in a little deeper, particularly crumpled but it took excessive noticing to become clear. He showed wear now. The crevasses were deeper, the faintest of wrung-out looks to him that grew all the deeper as he looked worriedly at the pile of preparations.
It softened, as Bruce asked, and he did not take his hand away from the broad, capable young shoulder so impossibly unaware that burdens shared were often all the lighter. “There is comfort in knowing one isn’t alone. One is loved, and the love will go on. And that the guilt,” Alfred hesitated, guilt had been as much his for the little boy left in the alley with only the dead bodies of his parents to remember, “The guilt is not yours alone to carry.”
Suffering alone or suffering together, it was still suffering. Loss was not weakened the more people felt it. Or maybe it was guilt; Bruce blamed himself, and to see the pain he believed he’d caused would only drive the knife in deeper. He could take it in small doses, but all at once, that was a daunting thought. “We all loved him,” he agreed quietly, seeing no need to elaborate on who ‘he’ was. Sometimes he could say Damian’s name, and sometimes he couldn’t. As for the guilt not being his to carry alone, he shook his head. Guilt and shame, and he forced himself to keep from looking away, to meet Alfred’s gaze without faltering (much, at least). “I was there. No one else was. I could have-- I should have saved him.” Surprisingly, he managed to speak the words rather steadily, as though reciting something he’d rehearsed to get right.
Alfred thought of loss as incremental, the wave against sandstone that took a lifetime to bleed down to grains of dust once more. He thought of people as the way to shore up the wall once more, to spread the wave out whilst it hit. But he saw nothing of this recognition in Bruce, nothing of a man who had learned that he was more than what he gave to others, who knew family the way it was meant to be. He saw only the creeping shadows of guilt and self-doubt and the exhausted weight of a death as an anchor instead of a sadness that would, inevitably be put right.
And then he heard the last, inevitable statement as if he were hearing a little boy once again, a little boy whose voice had quavered more than the man’s now did, but a little boy who echoed in that of the man, nonetheless. Alfred did not think. Had he, he would have inevitably come to a different course of action. Instead, he hugged Bruce, hard. The older man smelled of peppermint and of coffee, of crisp clean cotton and faintly of beeswax, and the wool of his sweater was scratchy. But he hugged Bruce like he’d hugged the boy, without sentimentality or the fear he would break, as if love were enough.
“You couldn’t have. No one could have. If he died it was because no one could have, Bruce,” he said, close to his ear, and the hug was tight. “You listen here, you do the best you can and no more. That’s all anyone can ask of you, that’s all you can ask of yourself.”
Bruce had been expecting some sort of calm, logical argument to be made which the reasonable part of him would recognize as truth but, in his typical stubborn fashion, he would for the most part reject in order to hold fast to his guilt. He was terrible at absolving himself. But the it’s not your fault assurance didn’t come, not right away, and the hug caught him off guard. He wasn’t expecting it. Alfred was a steady, constant presence; he’d been there for every loss, and that history made it easier to let go. Most physical affection was withdrawn from, but this time, just this once, he only tensed for a moment before abandoning the desire to resist and submitting instead. Loss ached, and he struggled to understand it just as he had struggled as a child. There was simply no making sense of it.
Eyes closed, he inhaled a deep, shuddering breath as he listened to the older man. “It isn’t fair,” he said, helplessness and frustration. “The best I can wasn’t enough, Alfred. He was just a boy.”
He felt the same; a boy, a man, it made no difference. Alfred gathered him as tightly as he’d hugged the small boy and as if the physical affection were not startlingly out of the ordinary, as if it were not commanded by a situation as devastating as it was tearing apart what fragmented family they both had in this new place. “I know,” he said, soothing-calm, and solemn, sadness buttressing the gravity of the words. “It is senseless, Bruce. But you cannot carry it with you. You cannot carry him with you. Not like that.” He thought of Damian, of laughter and of the children who were now as disparate as scattered sand.
“They need you. You need them. To remember him, to grieve for him.”
He carried the dead with him because he didn’t know how to let go. They were ghosts, unseen but not weightless, guilt eclipsing the bright snapshot of memories that most people clung to. It wasn’t that Bruce wanted to think of them that way, as failures; his parents, Rachel, Damian. He just couldn’t help it and old habits were hard to break when they became familiar. To remember them as they’d lived, and not as they’d died, was something he struggled with. “I don’t,” he began, the start of an admission that he didn’t know how, but he stopped. No amount of words or comfort could reach inside him and change how he was built, how he thought. “I’ll try,” he said instead, hushed, the same thing he told everyone else, and he told himself.
But Alfred was right, even if he’d evaded it so skillfully. He needed his family as much as they needed him. He nodded, another shuddering breath escaping, and held on to the older man just a little tighter.