Title: Waypost
Author: Meridian
Rating: PG
Summary: Infamy spoils intimacy on all but the most special of days. This is one that Alfred Pennyworth celebrates to mark the history of the living for the benefit of the dead.
Notes: Originally, this was supposed to be a piece about confrontation. Though their relationship is by no means antagonistic, I didn't believe that Alfred would be so blase about Bruce's sudden return as was portrayed in Batman Begins. I wanted to draw a scene of gentle reproach on Alfred's part and embarrassed humility on Bruce's for longer than that short exchange when they reconnected. This was supposed to be part of that, set before Bruce's publically acknowledged return to Gotham. Instead, I started writing from Alfred's point of view, and it became a meditation on his life and habits while Bruce was gone. One day, I will write that other story, but Alfred's voice is just too much fun, too rich and sumptuous to be denied its own way. Must be a British thing.

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The umbrella waited next to the door in an ancient stand, the sort of antiquated device that one never ran across in less stately homes. Alfred swore by it. It kept water off the majestic but easily mussed carpets and the vulnerable hardwood floors that would require immediate attention if doused. These days, anything that kept him from having to bend over in his work was a blessing.

He withdrew the perfectly ordinary black umbrella, gripping the crook of the wooden handle gently as he undid the clasp securing the ribs. In elegance and quality, it could not compete with much that surrounded it in Wayne Manor, but at least it was better than those three-dollar jobs one found on a street corner on rainy days.

It always seemed to rain on this day.

Alfred didn't mind. Rain made him introspective and less conscious of his steady withdrawal from the outside world. The manor had been quiet for some years now, save for his puttering about. A maid service might have been called for dusting or turn-downs on the linens, but there was no point. He wasn't going anywhere, and, despite being a billionaire on paper, he had nothing much else to do with his time but look after the place.

Rainy days set his arthritis to flaring, so he could take his lazy time about things with justification, if anyone noticed or asked. No one ever had, but he bristled defensively nonetheless. Some things didn't fade with time.

Alfred stepped out of the front doors, umbrella handle tucked snugly around his jacketed arm, throwing the bolts and setting the security code by rote. He turned, examined the grounds, found them to his satisfaction, and nodded. The house he could look after; he trusted the gardener to mow the lawns. His trust had not been abused, nor had Master Wayne's money. Before leaving the dry porch, he extended the umbrella, black ribs arching and bowing outward in a three-foot protective radius, tasteful cherrywood tips extended daintily at the ends. He took a moment to collect himself and took a resolute step forward.

The first step was always the hardest.

Alfred had never been the type to do a thing halfway. When he had moved to America, secured in a position with the Wayne family, he had never allowed himself to regret it. He adopted his new home as if it had been his old, though never losing a stitch of his decidedly English upbringing. Perhaps that was why he hardly felt old most days; even when his joints ached and he tired at earlier and earlier points in the evening, he could prepare himself a cup of tea in the proper way and find that his skill hadn't aged a day. The old way he did things was still the proper and best way, anyhow. Some might have thought him stubborn, but he preferred to think of himself as resolute.

Once he took that first step, there was no going back, so every step after was simplicity itself. To any casual observer, he was an old man gone for a walk in the rain. Of course, Wayne Manor hadn't enjoyed casual observers for quite some time, but that didn't change his sense of how different his appearance would be from reality. Today had nothing to do with a senile man's daft fancy for perambulations in the rain while wearing his best suit.

Today was not about him, period.

He kept to the paths, stumbling on soggy gravel but otherwise unencumbered by the weather or the state of the lawns. He figured this must be a very English habit, appreciating nature while safely maneuvering around it. None of the Waynes had ever seemed at all reluctant to run through the grass, relax against trees, or dig deep in the gardens. They wouldn't, naturally, seeing as they didn't have to clean up after themselves much. Perhaps his respect of and reserve from nature stemmed from his life as a servant, constantly dismayed at one item or another of clothing too earthy to be salvaged.

Memories of happier times always came on this day and, mercifully, never with the melancholy those memories brought on any other day. He could think of young Master Bruce scampering through the estate with only fondness, no matter how he'd chided him at the time. Thomas and Martha would sometimes sit on the veranda, laughing as Bruce and little Miss Dawes played tag or flew kites. They sat in the bright sunshine to watch their boy at play, not too proud to slap on a little sunscreen or wear hats to protect themselves. Thomas was a doctor, after all.

He passed the empty veranda--the furniture long ago moved into storage--and smiled, almost wishing he wore a hat so he might raise it to the ghosts sunning themselves there. With stilted dignity, slowed by his ever-stiffening knees, he descended the steps away from the house, down towards the magisterial oak tree some hundred yards beyond the stairs.

An austere, imposing thing, the tree reminded him of England, though none like it had ever graced any home he'd had in that country. It was truly ugly, gnarled in a way only a witch might appreciate, but Alfred thought it magnificent. It certainly gave the cemetery an air of spooky yet serious reverence. One did not trespass lightly on the hallowed ground guarded by such an ancestral creature.

And he wasn't trespassing now. He was here at his own invitation, yes, but he knew himself always welcome. The oak tree reached out invitingly, its leafless limbs rendering it naked and all the more vulnerable and seductive. Come in and keep me company, old friend, it seemed to say, for I've only the dead to watch over and none with whom I might converse.

Alfred opened the gate, taking note that it needed oiling, and closed it immediately behind him. His measured steps lead him to the statuary that lorded over the remains of Thomas and Martha Wayne. A single angel, head bowed, hands pressed together in prayer, cast pupil-less looks of love and devotion upon the ground at its bare feet.

Though life-size and made of marble, it seemed tastefully underdone as a monument. He remarked, as he did every visit, how very much it looked as though the winged seraphim was crying. The effect was primarily the result of one shock of black that streaked across the angel's otherwise perfectly white and smooth cheek. Naturally, the rain only furthered the illusion, as one fold of the angel's sculpted headdress funneled the water down alongside its nose.

He rather wondered if that had been done on purpose.

"Good morning, Master Wayne. Madam," he bowed his head once to each name carved in the marker beneath the angel. He really ought to have brought a hat so he could remove it, respectfully. The severe carving that spelt out THOMAS WAYNE and MARTHA WAYNE always had a way of making even him feel casual and informal in comparison. They wouldn't have liked the lettering at all. Master Bruce never had. How, between the two of them, the marker had come to be so hideously stodgy, he could not remember.

The gardener hadn't placed flowers, but then again, he hadn't been instructed to. There were two other days of the year for that. One was Master Bruce's birthday, which, given the elaborate parties his parents had thrown him up until their deaths, Alfred felt they ought still to celebrate. Every year, he saw to it that they were as festively decorated as possible for an entire week.

The other was a holiday etched so firmly in pain and loss that not even the lavish displays of irises--Martha's favorite--could make it a happy one. On that unhappy annual occasion, he wore a mood as black as his service suit. Of all the flowers that paid tribute to the Waynes' memory--some from old friends, off and on a bouquet from former employees, one or two from Miss Dawes when she got older--the only ones he had the privilege to place were a pair of red roses. No one ever sent roses to the Waynes, a flower of passion apparently not suited to the dead, whereas he could think of nothing better for such devoted, passionate people. That the flowers brought to mind blood as much as love weighed heavily on him every year.

He brought them every year anyway. Perhaps he was stubborn.

But today was neither of those days. Today was a more obscure sort of holiday, not being one he would share with the gardener as it belonged to no one else but the Waynes. It didn't even rightly belong to him.

"Happy Anniversary, sir and madam."

Thirty-five years, it would have been. Traditionally, thirty-five was the coral anniversary. Being sentimental but not frivolous, especially with money not his own, he hadn't brought any trinket to mark the occasion. Martha wouldn't have wanted gifts anyway. She had never wanted for any bauble in her too-short life; with the Wayne fortune behind him, Thomas had spoiled her with every pretty thing he could get his hands on, leaving no stone unturned, unprocessed, unpolished, or unpurchased. Now, she had no use for such material things.

Instead, Alfred brought them another sort of gift.

"Master Bruce sends his regrets, but he's engaged again this year, I'm afraid. Would you believe, he's gone off to save the whales? Imagine that," he chuckled, picturing Thomas and Martha laughing along with him. The young master got the worst seasickness aboard the family yacht in the tame tides of Gotham Harbor; on the pitching yaws of the Atlantic Ocean, he would have been a mess. "Still, someone's got to do it. Master Bruce was incensed, sir, when he heard that certain Scandinavian countries hadn't outlawed whaling. Off he went, his sea legs probably weeks behind him."

The last part might have been true, but the first was certainly a lie, a kindly fabrication. Every year the young master had been gone, he'd invented a new scenario, usually borrowing heavily from whatever human interest story was forefront on the National Geographic that was still delivered to the manor in Martha Wayne's name. She'd been such a fan of nature stories, travelogues, and anthropology, donating so substantial an amount to the magazine that it still came twenty-some odd years after her death.

The stories Alfred elaborated for them tickled Martha's fancy for tales of far-flung places and Thomas' aspirations for his son to be every bit the sincere humanitarian that he was. Their first anniversary following Master Bruce's disappearance hadn't required any sort of grandiose lie; he'd told the truth, detailing in full the investigation, steadfast in his assurance to them both that Master Bruce would be back soon enough. Truth be told, he hadn't been sure of any such thing. His concern had amplified with each passing day that brought no news of the young master, such that the Waynes' anniversary seemed hardly a singular day at all.

He made up for it the following year; voicing aloud his fantasies of Master Bruce's adventures helped him believe in his own lies, which was a sort of comfort. That year, Master Bruce was working tirelessly as a Red Cross volunteer in Kenya, instructing men and women how to protect themselves against HIV infection and malnutrition. It would be quite the resume-padder for when Master Bruce returned to attend medical school. Just like his father.

Another year saw the official end of the active investigation into Master Bruce's disappearance. An open case but a cold one, Commission Loeb had telephoned himself to express his regrets. Alfred didn't fret any because he'd come to realize that Master Bruce would be found when he wanted to be. He went on, regaling the Waynes with descriptions of the bohemian lifestyle their son had adopted in order to exorcize himself of his personal demons. Master Bruce worked a commune turnip farm, soil got deep under his nails, large rice-paddy type hat on his head to protect him from the sun, doing Tai Chi in the dawn light with the rest of the hippies. He would learn to be grateful for the simple pleasures in life, coming back to Gotham minus his sense of entitlement, destined to be a paragon of charity such as even the Wayne family had never seen.

The third anniversary was the most unpleasant by far. Two days before, Mr. Earle had approached him with the first draft of papers that would, a year down the road, officially declare Bruce Wayne deceased. He'd been unable to stand so reverently or quietly before the tomb of his friends that year, berating Mr. Earle to them, accusing him of betraying their trust--though never suggesting they might have erred in choosing him as CEO; that could not be. Master Bruce was transformed into a crusader, a UN peacekeeper who used diplomacy as much as force of arms to quell international crises. Wouldn't Mr. Earle look like a complete git when the world celebrated the young master's accomplishments in the Solomon Islands?

In defiance of what Mr. Earle and his ilk had the nerve to call 'reality,' he kept up his complaints to the Waynes for two more years. Master Bruce dead? What rubbish. Why, the young master had gone on a walkabout in Australia to protest the treatment of Aboriginal peoples by the Howard government. He'd climbed Mt. Everest and would phone from the top of the world when he got there. Dead? Master Bruce had never been more alive.

Last year, he mitigated his rage, cowed as he was by the massive inheritance that had been transferred from the name of Wayne to that of Pennyworth. Inheritance, he'd asked, incredulous, at his age? The humble servant sat upon the king's ransom and nearly had a heart attack scaling the pile of riches. It would have been kinder to shoot him than to force him to look at all those blasted zeroes. He loved the young master, but when he got back from fighting the drug war in Colombia, he was going to give the boy a serious talking-to.

And this year: whales. He had the whole thing thoroughly researched, supplemented by a special he'd seen on Nova and a long conversation with a young man wearing a hemp necklace outside the grocery store. The young master would be wearing something of the same costume--hopefully, without the piercings about the face. Martha loved it, Thomas shook his head and sighed his son's name with an amused exasperation.

Alfred talked to a stone and a tree for an hour, a goodish limit that was not too short, lest he cheat his departed friends of his company, nor too long for him to question his own sanity. Much. Old age granted him a curmudgeon's ability to rationalize and the Wayne billions entrusted to him more than compensated for his oddities--placing him in that delicate order of eccentrics rather than the pedestrian rank of crazies.

As ever, before taking his leave, he paused for a moment of silence. All the voices of ghosts died off, his imagination rested, and his mind cleared. Without this sober interlude, he might not remember to step back out of fantasy and nostalgia and resume living in the colder embrace of the now. There were no garden parties at Wayne Manor, and this was not a conversation. This was an old codger reliving episodes of the happy past to override the dour present.

He bowed to the marker and the angel. "Sir. Madam." A nod to each of them, and the visit was over. "If you hear from Master Bruce, do let me know."

Thomas Wayne would have found a way, that Alfred believed with all his soul. If the young master no longer enjoyed corporeal company, there would be a sign. He wasn't religious, he didn't need stone cracking or water turning to blood or anything so deliriously dramatic. It would be something damned practical because they would know how to make him understand he was no longer held responsible for their prodigal son. Still, it seemed pessimistic, to concede anything to death and defeat on this joyful day, but it was his token acknowledgment of that dreadful mass-delusion called reality.

That was what no one would understand. It wasn't crazy to cling to hope. Madness was to give up on Master Bruce entirely, to spend the rest of his days recycling anniversaries both pleasant and awful. Hope gave a man direction. If that direction led him to the end of his days without rewarding his patience, so be it. The only other option was despair, and despair, like rudeness, just wasn't part of his nature.

He bid the Waynes adieu, extracting himself to allow them some privacy. Retracing his steps to the manor, he felt light, scaling the stairs with much less difficulty than he'd had descending them. He reversed the routine, thinking of chores to be done, silver to polish, dishes to wash, beds to turn down, the sort of blissful busy work he might lose himself in until the calendar page revealed a less significant date.

As it turned out, he had to jog, rush through the security code and fumble nimbly with the keys, startled into action by a most unusual sound for Wayne Manor.

The phone was ringing.