I saw some posts about how if Bruce is abusive, Alfred is at least an enabler and – yeah. But that also got me thinking about Alfred's role on the batfam in general, y'know.
Like there is this popular interpration (even one of the more canon-compliant ones!) Of him as the emotional glue of the family. And I keep seeing fics where people dig at Bruce or even the kids for keeping him as the butler when he clearly is like family to them, but like, one thing this interpration of his service making him less of a formal family member (which is a. Take in its own rights anyway) keeps ignoring is that, unlinke even BRUCE, Alfred has always been a fully independent adult in his internacions with the batfam. Like my man is and was always able to up and leave. He isn't being forced into any roles here.
Which makes me wonder what's even going on in his head. From what I understand of canon backstory, he met Thomas in the War™ and ended up as his head of staff afterwards. And this can be read a lot of ways – maybe Thomas just wanted someone trustworthy and loyal and useful by his side, because Gotham has always been a dangerous city to hold power in, and he needed someone on his staff capable of fending off intruders and making sure the new cook isn't poisoning him. Or maybe he really cared about Alfred and wanted him to have a place to go, away from England and the army and where he could make a life for himself (land of opportunity and all that) – and if Alfred decides this life is at Gotham, having his back, who is Thomas to complain?
But regardless of Thomas' intentions, Alfred never felt like he belonged in his and Martha's world. Be it gratitude or love, he stayed at their backs, but never at their sides. And maybe the distance even saved him the end, because of how used he gets to watching the house when Martha and Thomas need to take Bruce in a nightly outing.
The late night call from GCPD chocks him. Gotham is dangerous to those in power, with its underhanded poisonings and supicious gas leaks. It is full of random, mundane violence as well – gang shootouts and armed robberies and all the ills of big cities. But random and mundane happens on Alfred's world, not Martha and Thomas'. That is, of course, until it does.
How blindsided he was, when the will was read – when Bruce's custody went over a long list of family members (even the Kanes, that for all Martha argued with her sister, at least had a little girl Bruce's age) and directly into his hands. Alfred doesn't understand it. He didn't expect to be included, even less to be trusted with the most precious thing in the Wayne household.
He doesn't get Bruce right away – the whole ordeal surprises everyone else as much as it did him, and he becomes murder suspect number #1 for a while there. And it's then that Alfred understand why his name was in that will. Because the Waynes aren't yet cold when the vultures swarm in, trying to pick their legacy apart, and Bruce is in the middle of it all, grieving and young and so, so vulnerable. Alfred is the only one that can be trusted with him because he is the only one wise enough to know his place. It's called a guardianship for a reason, after all.
So he raises Bruce with the same fervour he took orders in the army and polished heirloom silverware in the Manor. The same distance, as well. And it's not that he doesn't love Bruce like a son – it's that he isn't foolish enough to ask Bruce to love him like a father.
And he knows, one day, Bruce won't need him anymore. He will grow up and become the shining beacon of hope to the city his parents always wanted him to be, and he will be whole and happy. Because one day Bruce will have a real family of his own and Alfred will be old enough the Manor's stairs will make his knees ache and he won't be able to fret about as efficiently. And that moment, when he is no longer useful, he will be asked to get back to his own world.
Except, of course, that dreaded day never comes, and it is so much worse than if Alfred had been sent packing the moment Bruce turned eighteen. Because Bruce up and drops out of college and announces he's leaving for a gap year abroad, and Alfred knows it's a mistake – that Bruce needs stability to flourish – but who is he to disapprove? Who is he to say no to this man who is no longer his ward, and was never his son? So he smiles politely and packs Bruce's bag and asks him to call when he's ready to come back.
Bruce doesn't call, not even once, and Alfred tries not to worry – tells himself he is the one that owes explanations to the master of the house, not the other way around. Untill Bruce comes back scarred in more ways than one, looks him in the eye and says he's going to save Gotham, just like everyone always expected him to. That he is going to do everything his parents hoped for and even more. So what can he do, except his job, when Bruce needs him still?
What can he do except sit and watch Bruce make the same mistakes he did, unable to say anything because it's not his place to do so?
How can he tell Bruce to spend time with Damian and teach to be a happy child, despite his trauma? How can he tell Bruce not to let Tim overwork himself trying to prove to the world he is worth a place in it? How can he tell Bruce to treat Steph and Duke like they are his own, even if they still have loving families to go back to? How can he tell Bruce that Cass would stay around more if he asked her to? How can he tell Bruce not to let his fear for Jason's life drive a wedge between them? How can he tell Bruce that it's not a signature on a paper that makes Dick not his son, not his responsability? When each and every one of theses mistakes were the same Alfred made with him, and he can never acknowledge that, because it would mean agreeing he failed Bruce first. And how can he have failed someone he owed nothing to?
No, I think Alfred is the one that insists on the title. Because his suit is as much as a disguise and a protection as the ones made of Kevlar, because there is a safe distance in being needed. If it is your place to help people – to listen to their problems and give sincere advice, to patch their wounds and cook them meals and make their beds –, then you never have to admit you do it because you WANT to. Acts of service is a love language, after all, and you so desperatily love all of this people that admiting it means being vulnerable, opening yourself to the possibility they won't love you back. Even if you know they do, that they would gladly invite you into their world, it is so much safer over here at yours. Because no longer being needed is natural, but no longer being loved? That, you could not survive.
If you're just the butler, Alfred, if you can leave, why are you still here? Bruce is grown, and so are his children. Thomas and Martha are long, long gone. You haven't even needed to polish the heirloom silverware in years, there are other servants around who do it just as well. You stay because you have always been a part of this world, and you can't scape it any more than you can admit it, because this is Gotham and here love always hurts.
And the Batfamily knows this, I think. They dance around it the same way they do each other's trauma – that's how they learned to do it, even. The worst thing you can do in the Manor is not talk about Bruce's parents, or about Jason's death and the myriad ways the family has betrayed and hurt each other, purposeful or otherwise; It's to ask Alfred to sit at the dinner table.
So that's not what they do. They come home from all corners of the world so Alfred can make soup when they're sick, and they don't step on his roses, and they let him pick the gala's décor, and they call him every time they need advice from wardrobe etiquette tips to which canned tomato sauce is better to their love lives and not letting their trauma ruin things. He won't let them tell him he's loved and he's family, so they show it. If he wants to be needed, than that's what he'll always be, no matter how old he gets, how trivial the matter. They love him, so they need him.
Everybody in this family needs therapy, a slap and a hug and don't you DARE pretend Alfred's any different
I've been staring at this in my inbox for a while and. I truly have nothing to add this is a masterpiece
origamiaround
janainaart
blakekathryn
titsay
baratheonpilled
vaporwave
2087
