"Nothing goes as planned.
Everything will break.
People say goodbye
In their own special way.
All that you rely on,
And all that you can fake
Will leave you in the morning,
But find you in the day."
"In My Veins" –Andrew Belle
Chapter Thirty-One:
He hadn't really meant to send her off so frigidly. It had been a long day, and his head ached—hell, his entire body ached. So with a glass of scotch, he sent himself off to sleep, and it was only when he woke in the morning that he realized the finality of his decision.
She was gone.
The manor was empty, devoid of life, except for the solitary butler, left alone with his thoughts.
Bruce was out on the streets of Gotham. Yes, he was with Miss Kyle, and that lairy girl certainly seemed to know her way around the city, but despite that, there wasn't a bone in the man's body that didn't ache to scour the city for the boy and bring him home safely. That's what he did. He was his guardian, his defender, his champion.
Could he withstand his protective instincts in order to respect the wishes of the boy? And was it simply his need to protect the boy that demanded he act? Or was it something else?
Was he afraid? Afraid that the boy was no longer a boy at all, but a young man—a young man who didn't need the butler's protection any longer? Who didn't need the butler at all?
If Margot were there, and if he expressed such worries, she would have simply laughed at him and turned the whole thing into some sort of joke. Either that, or she'd be on that ridiculous motorbike of hers, riding up and down the streets of Gotham, searching for Bruce.
Well, perhaps she was doing that anyway. There was no telling. She'd simply left sometime last night. Her bike was gone. Most of her things were gone, the rest scattered in disarray, as if she'd packed and left in a hurry. He didn't blame her.
It was for the best, he told himself. It was awful—God, was it awful—saying goodbye. But this way there'd be no distractions. Nothing to keep him from his duty, and his duty was raising that boy the best way he could. Even if right then it meant leaving Bruce to his own devices, despite every instinct of his.
Eventually, the boy would return, and he would be changed, because the streets changed people, Gotham changed people. Alfred didn't know when Bruce would come back, or what he would come back as. A boy? A man? Something in between? He only knew that he'd be different, and Alfred would have to figure out a way to manage that.
The last thing he needed was a distraction complicating things more.
For the time being, he would just have to accustom himself to being lonely again.
Simple work for a man like him.