the butler knows all, a batman fanfic

Title: the butler knows all

A/N: Written for the Batman Fashion Zine! I hadn't written an interview style piece before (and it's been ages since I wrote first person). This was a lot more fun than I'd expected to write. (Alfred is a gushing grandfather, you all know it to be true)

Summary: Alfred Pennyworth, butler to the illustrious Wayne family. What scandals does he hide behind his smile? Watch as this investigative reporter infiltrates the Wayne Manor and finds out!

…

The grand Wayne manor. An imposing building with 2 floors (that we can see), an east and west wing, and more windows than you can count. Where the flirty Bruce Wayne, charming Dick Grayson, elusive Cassandra Cain, intelligent Tim Drake, bad boy Jason Todd, and rebellious Damian Wayne all live. As well as his paramour for the day. This day, it's Selina Kyle (and do I hear wedding bells? Their on and off romance has been on for quite a while now).

I approach hoping for an interview with any of these elites. Maybe not Bruce, I don't fancy getting into a catfight with Selina over him. I can settle for Stephanie Brown, who is either one of Bruce's adoptive kids or just dating one of his children. Tim? Cassandra?

Unfortunately, no one is home but Alfred Pennyworth, the family butler. Graciously, after I lie about arranging an interview earlier, he agrees to give me one. At least, I think he does. He's British and that polite accent could just as easily have been him asking me to go.

To be honest, while Alfred is the butler, he's more than that too. "I started serving Thomas and Martha Wayne," he states as he dusts the mantle in the ornate reception room. As a condition to the interview, he requests that he can continue his daily tasks. The man is nothing if not dedicated to his job. "Then, after the tragedy, it was only natural I continued to stay."

And stay he did. While most would be intimidated by the task of taking care of a little boy, especially a little boy who had just lost his parents, Alfred never lost his stride. Aside from his butler duties, he handled cooking, cleaning, shopping, gardening, and a whole host of tasks that any other manor would have a whole team handle. That didn't change even as Bruce grew up.

"He was very different before," Alfred admits, pausing to show a picture from the mantle. It depicts a smiling boy holding the hands of his parents. There's something innocent about him, something precocious, and nothing at all like the man with the come-hither eyes he grew up to be. "He smiled more then."

I would argue he still smiles now, just a bit differently, but something tells me that's not what Alfred meant. Several other pictures on the mantel depict Bruce throughout the years—there he is, taking his first martial arts class. Another one with him sitting under a tree, a pile of books at his side. A graduation photo. His smile is gone in all of them, a boy still coping with the loss of both his parents.

"I could not fill that gap but I tried to ease it." Alfred sets the photos back, his eyes lowered as he remembers.

And maybe he couldn't, but he certainly tried his best. While Bruce's hoard of girlfriends might indicate a psychological issue that needs to be dealt with, his gaggle of kids show something else. A need for family. And while I cannot tell how much of the personas they show are just for the media, for their fans, they all seem happy enough.

"I was surprised when he brought in a little lost boy," Alfred softly murmurs, thinking back to the day that Dick Grayson had joined the family. An orphan too, Dick Grayson had just lost everything when Bruce took him under his wing. "It was like going back in time."

And the second time around it was easier. "Laughter sounded through the halls again." Something about having a kid in the manor brought life back to it and it wasn't long before we started seeing a serious side to Bruce's playboy persona. Something almost fatherly, but not quite. Children took to him and it wasn't long before Jason Todd, Tim Drake, and Cassandra Cain joined the group.

"Jason is a wild one," Alfred comments dryly, his hand pausing as he dusts the couch. "Always picking one fight or another. Dick tried to reign him in but there was only so much he could do from college."

By the point the eldest son had moved out, Jason Todd had moved in. Maybe Bruce couldn't handle the quiet in the halls. He got more than he expected with the rambunctious Jason. Not much is known about his past. Same with Cassandra Cain, the fourth child of the family. Considering how mysterious their pasts are, rumours are that they're Bruce's illegitimate children, from one of his many hookups.

Alfred frowns disapprovingly at the thought. "They are children who needed him, that's all." And that is all he will say on that matter. Maybe he's right, that Bruce's philanthropist side got the better of him. Or maybe Alfred just doesn't want to think of his ward like that.

Either way, once Jason left the house (and we're not quite sure why, but it seemed like a big fight), Tim Drake joined. A quiet child in comparison, and perhaps that was what Bruce needed after dealing with the troublemaker. While much is known about Tim Drake, it isn't quite clear how he got introduced to Bruce Wayne. Tim had a family of his own at the time—a mother, a father, and a girlfriend even. Stephanie Brown, a girl who flits in and out of the manor, sometimes with her arm hooked in Tim's, sometimes with Cassandra's. Cassandra Cain also came in at this time and it was clearly a very full house.

"Stephanie really livened everything up." At this, Alfred smiles fondly, thinking of the bright, sassy girl who people have come to love for her twitter feed. Her relatable content has made her a star of her own right. "Tim would sometimes withdraw into himself and Cassandra…well, she didn't always know how to play with others."

The trio were well documented at the time, and it was hard to find one without at least one of the others. Even now, the house is full of pictures of all three, most of them selfies taken by Stephanie. Looking at them chronologically, it's a stark contrast between how Cassandra looks in the first few, stiff, out of place, awkward, and how she looks in the more recent ones. She's learned to smile, that's for certain.

"She takes after Bruce the most." And perhaps Alfred has a soft spot for her for that very reason. It seems cleaning is no longer on his mind as he now takes me on a tour of the ground floor. The second floor is off limits and he refuses to acknowledge any possibility of a basement. We go from room to room and he points out family photos, taken on skiing trips and parties. There's one of Cassandra, Stephanie, Koriand'r and Barbara Gordon at a pool. I wonder how that went, considering both Koriand'r and Barbara are Dick's on and off paramours, but the two women seemed to be hitting it off in that photo. Another photo shows Dick tugging Damian Wayne's cheeks up into a smile.

"Dick has been a good brother to him." Alfred points out several photos in the same vein, of Stephanie tugging Damian along on skates, of Tim and Damian glaring at each other. "They all have been."

Damian Wayne, the only child to actually carry Bruce's last name. The only official child of the bunch. Heir to both the Wayne and the Al Ghul inheritance. At the mention of Talia Al Ghul, Alfred frowns. At least as much as he will professionally allow it. Clearly there is some bad blood between the two, though I can't blame him. Talia's family is rumoured to have connections with the mafia and other underground groups. For a while, Jason had even joined them. "It's a good thing he's here," is all Alfred will say.

Despite their different statuses, the children get along with each other. Though maybe I shouldn't call them children—at this point, everyone but Damian is either a teenager or an adult. While they might not be siblings, they are certainly friends.

A testament, perhaps, to the Alfred's real powers in the family. He is a constant and while you don't find him in any of the magazine spreads or celebrity tabloids, you often find him in the wings of any event, ready to help his family. Even in these photos, he's often in the background, buttoning up a child's coat, setting up a meal, cleaning up a mess. The occasional one where he's in the focus, he's surrounded by his surrogate family.

While he admonishes me and refers to himself as "only a butler", I think otherwise. He dotes on them like a grandfather and it is very clear that they share that feeling back.

A sentiment that's only cemented when he starts doling out baby pictures. "Dick really liked the disco scene—"

There's a loud screeching in the manor and before I know it, Dick and Jason are hurtling down the main steps, yelling at Alfred to stop. Tim is hanging behind, his face beat red, while Stephanie is laughing loudly. Cassandra doesn't know what to make of this and looks at Damian in askance, who only scowls. In a corner, I see Bruce rubbing his forehead, a wry grin on his face.

A family. That is certainly what they are.a