#23: Trauma, Pt 3 (LaFleche / Swimer)

“He should be fine in a day or so Alfred. A nasty knock, but nothing serious,” Thomas Elliot said walking down the stairs with Bruce Wayne’s butler from Dick Grayson’s room. “He’ll be a woozy for maybe a day but other than that, no serious harm done.”

“Thank you Master Thomas,” Alfred said. “Your unexpected visit turned out to be most comforting.”

“Well the way Bruce and Vicki blew out of the party, I figured I’d have to have to stop by. After all Brucie and I have a whole lot to catch up on.,” Elliot said, pulling his coat on. “This place hasn’t changed much huh?”

“Oh, Master Bruce has done some fairly extensive renovations over the years, but the old girl still has her charms.”

Elliot opened the front door and then turned to Alfred.

“Say, how did Dick hurt his head like that?”

“Rock climbing I believe.”

“Hmmm,” Elliot said. “Well, tell him to wear a helmet next time and tell Bruce to visit me at my new office downtown will you?”

Alfred closed the door and watched Elliot drive away before pressing the intercom button.

“He’s left sir. You may come up.”

“Actually,” Batman’s said, clearly wincing. “Perhaps you’d better come down.”

Alfred found Bruce laying back on one of the medical tables. His body armor stripped down to the waist. Two deep red grooves marked his chest and wrapped around his torso to his back. He was holding an ice pack to his head.

“What have you gone and done to yourself this time,” Alfred said. “Have you considered that you might just get it over with faster and serve yourself up to Killer Croc? It would certainly leave less of this cleaning up for me to do.”

“Alfred,” Batman said. “I think I should be dead.”

“I’m stunned into silence. But please hold a moment, sir, while I call the 6 p.m. news to tell them a deranged, billionaire who leaps from skyscrapers on a nightly basis while dogging bullets should be dead. I am sure they will make it their lead item,” Alfred said, pulling out his all to familiar medical kit.

“Don’t quit your day job,” Bruce said, slowly sitting up. “I was on the spire of Wayne Tower, trying to think. But I had a…I blacked out for a moment and fell.”

“Blacked out?” Alfred said, the sarcasm gone from his voice. “That’s never happened to you before. May I presume by your presence here that you came to in time to save yourself?”

“I might I have. I don’t remember. I woke up on the roof. My cables are all still in my belt and this…ouch…welts appear to be from a zip line,” he said. “Like the ones I use.”

“A zip line? Miss Gordon perhaps?”

“No. I’ve got her out watching Fynn in case the Wrath comes after him next.”

“Well Master Grayson is still upstairs after your ill advised and juvenile assault….”

Bruce layed back down on the bed, groaning with every move.

“I don’t need a lecture, Alfred,” Bruce said, while Alfred applying rubbing alcohol to the wounds. “Ouch!”

“I am sure, sir, that as your medic, I am in the best position to know what you need.”

There isn’t any point, Alfred thought. There really isn’t. No need to try. He’ll only say no. So why do I know I will do it anyway?

“Sir?” Alfred spoke into the wireless mic.

“Alfred for the last time, no.”

Ah Bruce, Alfred thought. For all your talents, and they are many, your demons grip you like a vise.

“Sir, injuries need time to heal. Even yours. You’re not exactly the last son of a long dead race of super-men, you know.”

“Funny,” Batman said. Alfred could hear the batmobile’s engines turn over into another gear. “The Wrath isn’t going to rest. He has Vicki. Probably more victims. Something just feels about of place Alfred…”

“That would be your floating rib, sir.”

“...I can’t explain it. Just something…else.”

Alfred was pacing nervously now. Bruce, even at his worst, even when that childhood rage erupts, even then, Bruce’s judgment remained sound. Bruce has always been at the mercy of his emotions. His caped and cowled colleges always think he is unemotional. As devoid of human sympathy as he is gifted in intelligence. But they are wrong. Bruce is volcano of emotion. But always it is kept in check by his reason.

Even at this worst, even when the childhood rage erupts, his judgment is sound.

So whatever this was, it wasn’t good.

“Something ‘else’? Sir, at the risk of sounding like a broken a record….”

“When has that every stopped you…”

“…You clearly need rest. May I remind you that ‘something else’ is hardly the evidence based answer you always insist upon. I know you are panicked about Miss. Vale I share your anxiety. But you won’t do her any good running about blind.”

There was nothing. Not even breathing. Just nothing.

“Sir?”

“Ok. Alright. Ok,” Batman. Alfred you hear the faint grinding of his teeth. “I’m on my way back. I’ll be there in an hour. If he’s able, get Dick up. I need him.”

Alfred switched off the mic and wondered how it was he had never taken up drinking as a serious hobby.

“Alfred, what the hell’s a Redwing?”

It was Grayson, standing in the stairwell of the cave. His eyes hooded from fatigue and his paler still too close to grey for Alfred’s liking.

“Master Dick, you should be in bed…”

“I won’t ask again. Both of you know the answer. Even Gordon knows. Gordon! I think I’m entitled to it.”

Alfred leaned against the wall of the cave and sighed.

“Very well, sir. Now sit down before you fall down. I’ll get you some tea and tell you a story.”

“What did you say?”

Alfred took a deep breath. Better he tell Grayson now than Bruce. His two alpha males would never get through this without someone getting bruised. Again.

“Redwing is not a what. Redwing is a who. Was a who,” Alfred said slowly. “Redwing is Batman’s original partner.”

“Alfred that is crazy. I’m his….”

“Master Richard, you are closer to Bruce Wayne than any person alive. And yet there are still a great many things about him you do not know.”

“How? I mean, when?” Dick said, sipping his tea to relax himself.

“It was half way through Bruce’s second year as Batman. He had already made an alliance with a young police detective named Gordon but most of the police force thought him an urban legend,” Alfred said. “Gotham was becoming a theatre of the macabre. The Joker had made his first appearance. The criminal element was going from organized to chaotic. And lethal. It was during this time that Batman destroyed an underground criminal syndicate that used children and teenagers as muscle to carry out crimes. Crime fighting still wasn’t old hat for Bruce and he very nearly died confronting the ringleader. One young man rushed to his aid. Saved Batman’s life and helped him end the syndicate for good.”

“And this was?” Grayson asked.

“His name was Jason Todd. A street tough boy with all your physical talents, sir, but with a crueler heart, shaped by life on the street.”

Alfred cleared this throat; unsure of how much detail he should drop on Grayson all at once.

“I believe much as he saw in you the child he wished he could have been, Bruce saw in Master Jason the boy he would have been without his parents’ fortune. He took him in almost without a thought. He told me it was better to save Jason then, mold him into another Batman, than to have to face him later as an enemy.

“Like you, Master Jason took the training well and was soon out on the streets as Redwing…”

“Stupid name if you ask me…” Grayson said.

“Jason was independent minded and stubborn. So Bruce allowed the boy a great deal of latitude, even early on, to carry out missions alone.”

“You have got to be kidding,” Dick said, pour more tea and reminding himself to stay calm. “Bruce didn’t let me out of his sight when I was Robin for almost two years!”

“Yes I know, sir,” Alfred said, opening a bottle of brandy he kept in the cave’s pantry. “There is a reason for that.”

Grayson drank his tea and said nothing.

“Bruce sent Redwing to confront the Wrath when he first appeared in Gotham,” Alfred said. “The boy preformed well and helped stop the Wrath dead in his tracks. But the Wrath took that defeat personally. A few years later he returned and set a trap for Batman and Redwing. He managed to separate Bruce and Jason. When Bruce finally caught up to the Wrath, he saw the villain beating the boy…” Alfred stopped. He poured a drink into a glass and shot it down in a single gulp. “The Wrath was beating the boy with a crow bar. When Bruce rushed to stop it, the Wrath set Jason on fire and then set off a series of explosives.”

“Oh my god…”

“The immolation was nearly complete. A few scraps of Jason’s costume and some blood really all that was left,” Alfred said, downing another brandy before putting the bottle away.”

“Why wouldn’t he tell me?” Grayson said in a whisper.

“For the same reason he almost never talks about it with me. Other than his parents’ death, nothing haunts him more. He swore he would never take another partner again. So do take heart that he was moved enough to bring you into the fold.”

“I guess,” Grayson said. “But…ok I don’t understand something. Before Bruce and I brawled he was looking at a blood sample I brought him that matched Redwing’s….”

“Part of a game meant to distract me,” Batman’s voice came from the darkness of the cave. Grayson spun around to face him as he stepped into the light. Batman looked at his former partner hard and placed a hand on his shoulder. An awkward gesture coming from Batman. Still, where he not what he is, he would probably cry.

But he is what he is.

“But it’s a game I can bring to end, Dick,” he said. “But I’ll need your help.”