Becoming Real
Alfred goes to Bruce's favorite room to check on the boy, and as usual, he finds him fully clothed and asleep on the sofa. The butler wants to be irritated, but he can't. He's just glad the boy is resting. He takes a throw blanket and puts it gently over the small, inert form, and as he does so, he sees the corner of a book next to Bruce's arm. Slowly and quietly, he picks it up.
It's The Velveteen Rabbit. Alfred can't remember the last time he read it, but he can guess what fascination it holds for his young charge. He well remembers hearing Martha Wayne read it to her son over and over.
He sits down opposite Bruce for a few minutes, watching the boy to make sure he doesn't wake with a nightmare. As he waits, he begins to flip through the book idly, remembering it from his own childhood, long past.
Does it hurt?' asked the Rabbit.
'Sometimes,' said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. 'When you are Real you don't mind being hurt.'
'Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,' he asked, 'or bit by bit?'
'It doesn't happen all at once,' said the Skin Horse. 'You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.'"
The butler remembers being enchanted by the passage, as a boy, but not knowing quite what it meant. Now, a feeling pierces him that is so sharp it has no business coming from a children's book. He shuts the slim volume and watches Bruce Wayne, and tears spring to his eyes.
He knows, now, what it means to be Real.
He knows what it is to have his dignity loved off, by a little boy who used to love to tackle him, jumping on his back until he feigned defeat. He knows how it feels to have all other purposes fall out of him, until all that's left is the desire to care for Bruce. And he knows what it is to feel loose in the joints and shabby in the heart.
"When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."
That's the truth of it. That's what has him wiping his eyes with the back of his hand as he marks the slow, steady breathing of the little boy. It doesn't matter what Bruce says; he will love him. There is absolutely nothing, any more, that the child could do that he would not forgive.
Bruce doesn't understand. Not yet. There is still ugliness in his eyes. But, as Alfred rises and adjusts the afghan around the boy one more time, he smiles, because it doesn't matter at all. By loving Bruce Wayne, he's become Real.
A/N: This chapter is a tribute to Margery Williams, who wrote The Velveteen Rabbit, which is, in my opinion, one of the most profound books ever written.