The kitchen goes silent for a moment. From the sheer sound of nothingness, Alfred isn't even sure if any of the four of them are breathing anymore. For all he knows, time may have stopped, and their breaths with it.

Then, Tim chokes out a sob once more, and the kitchen erupts with noise.

Questions spill from Bruce's mouth, a litany of "when" and "how" and "why." Dick steps forward rapidly, steps pounding down against the floor as his words pounce forth with concern. Tim whines out a sob again, shaking his way back, completely fit to fall apart. As for Alfred…

Alfred knows that this just won't do.

"Enough," Alfred says, stepping forward precisely in time to get between Tim and a still-approaching Dick. "That is quite enough."

Dick's words die off, and Tim muffles another sob.

Bruce is not as easily swayed.

"Tim," Bruce says, and to his credit, the word is soft and filled with concern. "What do you-"

"No," Alfred says heatedly.

Bruce blinks at him.

"No," Alfred says again, more calmly this time. "Not yet. Not now."

Bruce gives him a long look, then gives Tim a longer look. Then, bless him, Bruce nods slowly and turns to Dick. "We left the Cave in a real hurry. I think it'd be good to make sure we didn't leave anything the wrong way down there."

Dick gives Bruce a betrayed look. "But-"

"I think it'd be good for all of us," Bruce says evenly, already backing out of the room.

Dick frowns, eyes darting back to Tim, but he follows Bruce away.

Alfred turns to Tim, who is still hunched in the corner, still muffling sobs, still quaking with what looks unfortunately like barely-disguised fear.

"Master Tim," Alfred says as gently as he possibly can, taking a step toward him.

Tim makes a heart-wrenchingly-horrid whimpering sound.

Rethinking his action, Alfred steps a few paces back. He glances around for a moment, then he gets an idea. He turns and heads for one of the nearby counters.

He pulls two kitchen stools away from under the counter. Carefully, mindful of all his joints but especially of his hip, even though it still feels gleamingly and painlessly new, Alfred settles on one of the stools. Quietly, he says, "I don't feel as if the floor is the most comfortable spot to be at the moment. Do you?"

Tim shakes in place in the corner but doesn't move.

Alfred bites back a sigh. "Master Tim, would you please join me?"

Tim's head jerks up at that. He stares for half a second at the two stools, then he scrambles forward, on hands and knees at first, then upright to clamber onto the stool, head ducked and body trembling all the while.

Just as before, Alfred dreads the question he must ask, but he dreads leaving Tim in this state more. "You say you're a metahuman?"

Tim nods miserably.

"Are you certain?" Alfred asks, although he himself is fairly certain the situation is precisely that, or at least something rather similar.

Tim nods again, looking even more miserable.

"When did you first discover that?" Alfred asks.

Tim peeks up for a moment, wetting his lips, then he ducks his head further down. In what's little more than a mumble, Tim says, "I was three, or two, maybe, the first time I really knew I was a freak."

"A freak," Alfred repeats, hearing his own voice going cold without him deciding to make it do so.

"A metahuman," Tim clarifies. "But I didn't know that's what it was until later, when I was about eight years old. I didn't know what metahumans were for years, so when I was a kid, I just knew I was a freak and bad."

Alfred tries to say something to object. He absolutely does try. However, his every word seems to dry up in his mouth, and for a long moment, there is silence.

Near-silence, that is. Tim whimpers slightly for several seconds, then he speaks in quite a rush. "I'm sorry! I knew I could heal myself then, that's what I mean, I didn't know I could do what I did now, I don't know how I did it, I'm sorry I didn't know, I should've known, I should've figured it out so Mother and Father could've really had some use for me, I should've been better, I'm really sorry, I can take your consequences just like theirs, and I'm sorry for-"

"You're sorry," Alfred says, cutting off Tim before the boy's frantic, heady rambling becomes any more breathless. "You are apologizing for… Healing me? Correct?"

Tim quakes in response.

Alfred thinks through Tim's words. "And you're apologizing because you had no idea you could do it?"

Tim quakes still, but this time, he does nod.

Alfred continues parsing the rambling. Despite his best desires, he comes to what seems to be an inevitable dark conclusion. "And your parents knew it. They know you can heal yourself, at least."

"They know," Tim says, sounding a mix of eager and desperate. "They help me!"

For a split second, Alfred's hopes lift upward. Perhaps not all is as despairing as it seems?

Tim's next words dash Alfred's hopes down into shards and splinters.

"They give me consequences, and they help me be better, they do their best, because they know metahumans are bad, just like Batman knows it, so they punish me and make me try to improve. They're good, really! It's my fault when I don't do better, because I'm a freak, after all, so don't get mad at them, they're doing their best to manage me when they hurt me, and they hurt me a lot, so they've got to be making me better by a lot," Tim says all in one breath.

Tim heaves in another breath and continues, but Alfred barely hears what he says.

Words like "messy" and "belting" and "cut" and "trying" make it to Alfred's knowledge vaguely, but only as if through a filter.

Alfred sits back and covers his eyes with a hand in horror as the full awful situation comes into view.

This boy. This special, clever, dear boy. This boy has been made to feel as if he is wrong for his very existence in being different, has been hurt and tormented and belittled and tortured, and he's received this from his own parents.

And they didn't notice. Bruce and Dick didn't notice.

Alfred didn't notice.

He's certainly noticing it now.

For a moment, Alfred allows himself to recoil. He shrinks back, physically and mentally and emotionally. He winces as he wishes this situation had never been this way for poor Tim, had never brought them to such a state, had never meant Alfred would need to notice it.

But he's noticed it now. He knows now. And he's going to do something about it now.

Alfred uncovers his eyes and gets to work.