Author's Note: This picks up at the end of the series finale of Birds of Prey, when Alfred is speaking on the phone at the very end of the episode. I'm starting with after the show, but I might go back and do a before as well. Reviews are adored.

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"Master Bruce, I thought that you might want to know, your daughter is doing rather well. You would be most proud. Most proud, indeed."

Alfred's calm voice rang through the headset along with a variation of other noises that not even years of retirement could drown out. The quiet crack of a lit fire, the almost impossible sound of the gentle wave of strings playing Mozart over a set of speakers a small distance away from the antique phone that probably still sat on the small wooden table in the study in front of the small fireplace, one of the only rooms in the Manor that was probably without white sheets covering the furniture. But aside from the small noises, it was impossible not to hear the pride that radiated from his dear friend's voice, a tone that the man on the other end of the phone conversation had not heard in decades. It had been ages since he had made Alfred noticeably proud.

"Thank you, Alfred."

Bruce Wayne's deep voice allowed those sole three words to slip into the quiet silence of the morning air before he pressed the small red button on the keypad of his cell phone, one of the few electronic devices in his home and one that was rarely ever used. As his large hand set the small device down on the wood floor next to him without making a sound or without shifting his position, he couldn't help but wonder what exactly that was about. It was rare to receive calls from Alfred, especially about Helena. She must have done something unusual, something like what her father would have done, to receive such praise, which meant that she was learning, she was growing up; because the last time he had spoken with Alfred, which had been a couple of years before, around the time when Helena decided to officially don an alter-ego of her own, she was far from agreeing with anything her father would approve of, let alone be proud of.

Her father.

It was nearly impossible to surprise the Batman, but Selina had done it unintentionally. He remembered the signs well, the signs that at the time had left him clueless to the actual reason behind them. Catwoman's disappearance from the streets for roughly six months, and then her short reappearance before she decided to hang up the whip for good. Although the signs had been present, the World's Greatest Detective didn't put them entirely together until he saw cute and quiet, blue-eyed, dark haired Helena Kyle with his own matching blue eyes. The Joker would never be able to top that surprise.

Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle had agreed not to marry, due mainly to the public eye. Selina, who had been unmasked several times and was well known by then to be Catwoman, would be an odd choice for playboy Bruce Wayne to settle down with, even though it had been known that the two had dated before her alter-ego was revealed. But he had visited his gorgeous baby daughter regularly, though the majority of his visits occurred after the sun went down, until she grew to the bright age of four and began to question why her father was never around. It was then Bruce's visits nearly stopped, save for the midnight ones he still occasionally made simply because he wasn't strong enough to fully stay away. Eventually his visits stopped entirely once she was old enough to be rebellious and not obey a curfew, though he watched beautiful Helena, who looked, and acted, more and more like her mother every day, grow from a distance as she was raised without the knowledge that her father was both the Prince of Gotham and the Dark Knight.

And then it happened.

It was bound to happen sooner or later. The Bat had been lucky for this fate to be put off for so long. The night that housed both Selina Kyle's murder and Barbara Gordon's paralysis would haunt his dreams more often than his parents' murders simply because he had the ability to stop those events from occurring, and he failed. He failed to save the sole love of his life and he failed to save the daughter of one of his most trusted friends, one who he considered a daughter himself. Once he ensured the Joker's final capture and sentence to a prison outside of Gotham, a prison unlike Arkham were the clown could not afford to mock the security, both Bruce Wayne and Batman retired. Or vanished.

Bruce took off to Europe and began to hope around several continents, much as he had done at the start of No Man's Land only a few years before, before finally the Prince of Gotham was forgotten and he vanished into the heart of Asia. He returned to Batman's roots to mourn in peace and attempt to calm his soul, to justify what he had dedicated his life to. His new house, that he had built by scratch, was deep in the Himalayas, away from society, away from the world. But even though over the past eight years he had kept his body in perfect condition, his mind had been trained far more in the silence of the mountains. Never again would he don the cape and cowl, but he could not ignore what had become a part of him. Ever since that fateful night decades before when young Bruce was only eight years old, Bruce Wayne was long gone. Batman had been born that night, but even though it would take years for Bruce to recognize it, Batman was the soul that the young billionaire had become.

And as much as he wanted to, he could not ignore his own soul.

"Your daughter is doing rather well. You would be most proud. Most proud, indeed."

Should he go back? Was he a coward for running? After all, that was what he had been doing for the past eight years.

His icy blue eyes, that had been closed ever since the sun arose nearly an hour before, suddenly opened to take in the spacious room surrounding him. Floor-to-ceiling windows covered three of the four walls that lined the wooden room and revealed the snow-capped mountains that surrounded him as the early sunlight streaked in through the clear blue skies. Still in position with perfect posture, with his legs folded in front of him and his hands on his knees, every muscle in his large body utterly relaxed, his gaze focused on the snow that the wind lifted from the smaller mountain peak that was just outside the windows in front of him.

Should he go back?

Alfred clearly wanted him to; why else would he call? Although the reasons for Alfred's desire for his return might stretch beyond the fact that he simply wants father and daughter to meet again. And Bruce could just imagine the smug little smile on the face of the wrinkly old Brit as he imagined Bruce's turmoil over that single, random phone call. The butler did know his employer all too well.

Swiftly, the six-foot-four frame of Bruce Wayne stood in one smooth motion, allowing his large, bare feet to hold him steady on the floorboards as he had managed to pick up his phone without any extra effort. It was time that the Prince of Old Gotham returned to see what New Gotham had evolved into without the aid of the Batman or his prodigies.