I always think that maybe Alfred was estranged from his father, and maybe his relationship with his mother was tense but good enough. But he’s lost her.
And he didn’t make many friends and mostly kept to himself, but his pal Thomas offered him a job, and they’re not close but Thomas is a good man and he accepts. And Thomas gets married, and he’s happy to have two friends.
People tell him, well if he had people to tell him anything, that he should settle down and start a family of his own. Thomas mentioned it once but when Alfred fell silent he looked at him like he understood something, and never said it again.
But Alfred he… he could never really imagine himself loving anyone. His family were kind but distant, and the closet thing he’d felt to love maybe was his mother before it all went wrong, and she’s gone now.
There’s something missing but he keeps quiet about it. Some people were meant to be family men. He was meant to be a butler on the outskirts of it all. Helping people he cared about. Care is enough. You don’t have to love anyone.
And then they have a baby, a little boy. And Thomas hands him over to Alfred, adjusts him in his arms and he looks at him with fondness.
And there’s something missing in him but he carries on anyway and the boy begins to grow up.
Learns how to walk, how to go to the garden how to run around. He’s always happy when he sees Alfred.
He’s carrying him one day and looks down and stops at seeing the expression in his eyes and realises. This boy loves him. Somehow despite everything. Despite the fact that he's broken and only a butler. And the boy squeals his little baby noise and bumps his face against Alfred’s, and Alfred realises he loves him too.
And he’s absolutely stunned by it.
This isn’t his child but he couldn’t love him anymore if he was.
And maybe one day, he thinks as he looks up at Thomas watching them fondly, that gentle look he always gives like a proud brother, he’ll learn to love his friend back too. Thomas has always treated him like a brother, Alfred can learn to love him like one.
They lose him before they can ever find out.
The love is overshadowed by frustration and fear at not knowing how to care for him anymore, and his heart breaks as he realises Bruce doesn’t feel his love anymore, doesn't think anyone loves him, but he doesn’t know what to do.
And Bruce runs away and overtime, they reunite and in some ways heal and work together to build the Wayne name up into what they know it to be.
And as Bruce has children and learns how to love again. And Alfred, he learns to be a better butler, friend, father adjacent.
He looks at his family and realises that somehow he’s become almost a father and a grandfather. He has a family. And he’s never been in love.
If he still had people to nudge at him to start his own family, now he’d know what to say. I don’t have time to date or get married he’d say with a sniff, looking over at his Wayne’s in the corner.
I have a family to take care of.
