Video ID: Night descends upon Wayne Manor, scarred red as ash falls from the sky. Soft organ music plays from inside, and a speck of ash lands on Lucious’ index finger from on a balcony where he stood. He looks from the sky to the speck of ash, and rubs it between his finger and thumb with a frown.
Dropping his hand and the ash with it, he looks out over Gotham — smoke billowing out from buildings with stark colors of black; red; and orange. It was almost like a painting; or a sunset one would never want to see.
Alfred walks out onto the balcony with two teacups in his hands, shaking Lucious from his thoughts as he looked toward the man joining him.
“Strangely beautiful, isn’t it?” Lucious comments.
Alfred sets down the tea on the thick, wooden railing in front of them. “I found a phonograph record that seems fitting,” he says in reply.
“Good choice.” Lucious picked up one of the teacups. “Wagner would’ve been too—”
Alfred, having reached inside the pocket of his suit-jacket, interrupts him: “And I found this.”
He reveals a photograph of he and Lucious from when they were younger, the two of them smiling happily behind a kid Bruce Wayne. All three of them look up toward the skies, watching as planes flew past with neat tricks and skilled synchronization. How unlike a night like this.
“I’d forgotten this,” Lucious says. “We took him to the air show.”
Alfred frowned. “Long time ago….”
“I think that was the first day where we forgot; just a little.”
The two drank their tea in silence then, looking over Gotham where the smoke grew; and both sirens and shooting alike sounded in harmony in the same manner as the music playing from inside behind them.
When Alfred set his teacup down, he said, “I just counseled two young people to disobey orders; to help, if they could.” He looked at Lucious with raised brows. “Perhaps we should take the same advice.”
Lucious doesn’t look back. “I don’t think I’m up for any fisticuffs.”
“There are other skills,” Alfred remarks.
“It’s probably useless, you know.”
“Oh, absolutely,” Alfred says.
He turned around to walk back inside, and Lucious followed after him without a word; the both of them leaving behind their tea as its steam rose up to the reddened skies of Gotham, much like the rest of the fires in the city. As the music crescendoed, so too did the chaos of the city; guns, sirens, explosions, and the silent-falling ash alike. End ID.
