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avaritia-apotheosis · 1 year

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They Might Be Giants

Alfred Pennyworth receives a phone call and is given custody over his recently orphaned nephew Danny Fenton.

A DPxDC Crossover // Read on [AO3] // Fic Masterlist

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one.

Alfred received the phone call on an idyllic Sunday afternoon. Wayne Manor was a sleepy old thing in this weather, the house quiet and still as Alfred polished the silver to a shine. Mr. and Mrs. Wayne were out, taking little Master Bruce with them to see a new exhibit on the Mesozoic period.

He picked up the ringing kitchen landline and cradled the receiver in the juncture of his shoulder and ear, a practiced speech of “ Wayne Manor, may I know who is speaking? Apologies, the masters are unavailable at this moment, but may I pass on a message?” already at the tip of his tongue.

Before he could open his mouth, the caller spoke. “Is this Mr. Alfred Beagle?”

Beagle was his mother’s maiden name, and the name Alfred took when he worked in Britain. The Pennyworth name, after all, was too closely associated with the Waynes. No one had called him that for years, now. He adjusted his grip on the receiver before resuming his polishing. “This is he. May I know who is calling?”

The caller—a tired sounding woman with a midwestern lilt—introduced herself as Mrs. Eller, the attorney to Jack and Madeline Fenton. “I am sorry that you had to learn about it like this, Mr. Pennyworth, but your cousin, Maddie Fenton, her husband, and their daughter Jasmine recently passed away in an accident this Wednesday. You have my deepest condolences.”

They were second cousins. That was the first thought that came to Alfred’s mind, the cloth in his hand frozen at the dip of the spoon he was shining. Their fathers were cousins who lived on opposite sides of the pond. Despite this, Alfred and Maddie remained in close contact with each other throughout their childhood. They were penpals, sending letters and photos and holiday postcards (Maddie more so than Alfred).

He was even invited to their wedding.

And now—

“Wait a minute…” Alfred’s mind stalled. He set down the silver and the cloth. “You said that the daughter died as well. They had a younger son. What happened to him?”

“He is alive and…as well as he could be in this situation. Danny is actually the reason why I needed to contact you.” Mrs. Eller cleared her throat. “In the Fentons’ will, you were named as their childrens’ legal guardian in case…the worst ever came to pass.”

“I…me? What about Alicia? Maddie’s sister?”

“It’s the late Doctors Fentons’ will, sir. And Danny has agreed to it as well.”

“I see.” Alfred’s breath came out in a shuddering gasp. “Well, if my dear late cousin willed it, then I am willing to comply. Please, let me make some arrangements first, and then I will get back to you with the details.”

He hung up the phone—

—buried his face in his hands—

—and breathed.

Alfred could not afford to cry right now.

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two.

Thomas and Martha were more than happy to accommodate Danny within the manor when Alfred told them about his current situation. It was expected—the Waynes always had a penchant for generosity—but Alfred couldn’t help the sigh of relief all the same.

(Master Bruce, precocious eight-year-old that he was, wrinkled his brows at the news. While fine with sharing his own things, the attention of his favorite people on the other hand, he hoards like a greedy dragon.)

A week after that terrible phone call, Alfred pulled the black Bentley up to the correct airport terminal and waited for his new charge’s arrival.

Alfred had seen grief in many faces. Had experienced it himself. Despite this, nothing would ever prepare him for the utter desolation that seeped through Danny’s body. The boy was wan faced— skin almost gray. His cheeks were sunken and hollow, eyes bruised by shadows and stained red by tears. His back was hunched, less from the weight of his backpack and more so from the grief that hung on his shoulders.

“Mr. Pennyworth?” Danny’s voice was a dull timbre, nearly cracking at the edges. Alfred shook his hand (freezing cold, but not clammy). “I remember you. Mom always made sure to send you a Christmas card.”

The Fenton family Christmas card was always something Alfred appreciated. He had no family of his own that he was particularly close to, his immediate relatives all dead or estranged in some way. That Alfred received a card without fail every Christmas was always a novel feeling. It was…nice, to know that he still had ties somewhere. Danny, Alfred remembered, never really smiled in those cards. Oh he’d stretch his lips wide and show his teeth, but it was obvious from the way the smile never reached his eyes, and the tightness around his jaw that Danny wasn’t a Christmas person.

And now, with only a few weeks left till Christmas, he might never be one.

The two slid into the Bentley and drove off in relative silence. Danny had his head pressed against the window, eyes glazed as he watched the high-rise Gotham streets soon fade into open, rolling hills, and then the palatial monument that was Wayne Manor.

At the sight of the manor, Danny blinked. “You a millionaire or something?” (Shoulders tensed. Hands curled into fist. His jaw clenched into a hard line, and there was a kind of acidity in his tone at the question. Problems with wealth? No. People with wealth.)

“No.” Alfred kept his tone bland. “But I do work for them. I am the Head Butler for the Wayne family, and have lived here with them while under their employ. They’ve graciously extended that hospitality to you.”

“Do I have to work for them or something?”

Most definitely a problem of someone with wealth.

Alfred shook his head. “While I would appreciate some help here and there, you have no obligation to do so. This is where you’ll live, with me. You can live here for as long as you’d like, and when you feel ready, we can also talk about entering you into school again.”

Danny drums his fingers against his forearm, eyes trained on the stone statues that guarded the door.

Thomas and Martha welcomed the boy with open arms. Danny shook their hands and thanked them with a raspy voice, polite smile not reaching his eyes.

Master Bruce, shy and wary of the newest addition to the Wayne household, hid in the shadows of his mother’s ash mauve skirts. His blue eyes peeked upwards at Danny inquisitively.

(Later, after Alfred helped Danny settle into the room across from his own, Master Bruce would pull Alfred aside and ask why Danny looked so sad.

Alfred knelt to Bruce’s eye level and pressed a warm hand on his shoulder. “He is sad because his family is gone.”

Master Bruce tilted his head. “Gone where? When will they be back?” For all that he was an intelligent lad, Bruce was barely more than a child. Death was a foreign concept. The death of a loved one was even moreso.

“Somewhere far, far away.” Alfred doesn’t want to be the one that teaches Bruce about death.)

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three.

Wayne Manor was rumored to be haunted. It was a silly rumor of course; the Manor was an old house, and old houses have a tendency to make noises. But with Danny, one might almost be tricked into thinking it was true.

Danny was a wraith. He haunted the wide and empty hallways with preternaturally silent footsteps, the hairs on Alfred’s nape standing on ends whenever he’d suddenly catch a glimpse of the boy at the corner of his eye. Sometimes Alfred would see him linger in shadowed nooks or in the solitude of his bedroom, staring vacantly at nothing.

“He is still grieving,” Thomas would say. “Be patient with him.”

“He needs space,” Martha advised. “Just be there for him, Alfie. Let him know you’re someone he can trust, someone he can count on for support.”

Alfred looked down at his white-gloved hands. He knew that. He knew Danny needed support, needed space, needed time . But what about after? When the pang of grief had dulled with time, and Danny decided to step into the world instead of letting it pass by him? He was a child, and all children need parents.

Alfred remembers his time as an intelligence officer, slumming with petty criminals and socializing with wealthy targets. Living double, triple, quadruple lives, and exploiting every weakness that he could dig up in order to tear people down.

Nurturing hands he had not.

(Fatherhood would never suit someone like him.)

“I don’t know if I can,” he confessed.

“But you must either way,” said Martha. “You are all Danny has left in the world.”

“The best is all you can really do,” added Thomas. “Look on the bright side: you’re already doing so well with Bruce.”

Sighing through his nose, Alfred rubbed the ache away from his temples. Recalled, then, the distant past with his own father who cared more for another family than his own. Jarvis Pennyworth was an austere man who embodied the ‘stiff upper lip’ idiom so commonly applied to the British people. Even in Alfred’s memory, Jarvis barely smiled.

Jarvis was not a warm father. And yet…

Alfred still remembered the warmth that bloomed in his chest whenever he was young and saw a plate of freshly peeled fruit sitting on his desk.

Jarvis was not a particularly warm father, and more often than not was clumsy and awkward with his affection. But he loved his family still. Even far away, Alfred knew that his father would always be there for him.

And maybe, that’s what Danny needed from him too.

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four.

Alfred's previous occupation necessitated light sleeping habits, and for all Danny's too-quiet footsteps, he too was at the mercy of the Manor's age. Danny's door creaked open in the dead of night, rousing Alfred from his rest. From there, it only took Alfred fifteen seconds to ascertain that Danny had already turned around the hallway.

Alfred rose from his bed and tied his dressing robe around his waist. His nephew had a habit of wandering outside his room late at night. At first, from Alfred's observations, it was only to aimlessly walk throughout the Manor. After the first week, Danny had begun to gravitate to one place in particular.

The library.

Though it was less for the comfort of books or the rather comfortable wingback armchairs that surrounded the fireplace, and more for the small balcony that overlooked the topiary garden.

The first time Alfred had followed Danny there, he nearly had a heart attack when he saw Danny sit at the edge of the balustrade, feet dangling twenty feet above the ground. He nearly gave away his hiding spot in the shadow of some shelves. Fortunate for him that Danny wasn't the most observant person. He was like his mother in that way; for all that Maddie was an intelligent and frightfully observant little girl, she could be totally blind to some of the most obvious signs. (Alfred wondered if she ever grew past that.)

Like the first time, Danny sat at the edge of the balustrade. His fingers drummed a rhythmic pattern against the stone, head tilted up as he watched the starry sky above. Unlike the first time, Alfred made a stop at the kitchen first, coming out with two steaming mugs of hot chocolate. Made just the way his own father used to.

Alfred deliberately stepped on a few creaky floorboards on his way over to alert Danny of his presence. He set down his own mug atop the railing before offering the other to his nephew. "It's cold out."

Wordlessly, Danny wrapped his hands around the mug and tucked it close to his chest. His blue eyes— startlingly bright in the darkness—scrunched in confusion as he tried to figure out Alfred's angle.

"It's not poisoned," Alfred joked dryly. He took a sip of his own mug as if to prove it. "That's too cliche."

"Too suspicious, too. It'd be easier to just push me off the balcony. Makes it look like an accident." Danny turned pink, sheepish. "Oh no that was kinda morbid. I'm sorry, I don't — I don't know why I said that."

He chuckled. "I'm the last person to reprimand you for morbid jokes, boy. And besides, you're right." Alfred smiled from beneath his cup when he saw Danny take a sip of the hot chocolate. "What brings you out here, anyway?"

There was a line of chocolate above Danny's lip. He wiped it away with the back of his wrist. "Stargazing, I guess. It's— there's less light pollution here and I wanted to just…look, I guess."

"Do you like astronomy?"

Danny nodded, gazing upwards at the cluster of stars above. "I wanted to be an astronaut when I was little."

"And now?"

"I still do. A lot. But I don't think that's possible for me anymore."

Alfred adjusted his grip on his mug. “Why not?”

Danny shrugged. “I don’t…know, really.” His voice is infinitesimally small that it is almost carried away by the evening wind. He hunched forward, elbows resting on his knees and mug settled on the bannister. Looked as if he was teetering on the edge and Alfred’s hand itched to pull on his arm as if to anchor him. “It feels as though I’m someone else. Like the Danny that wanted to become an astronaut lives in an entirely separate reality, and it feels weird to still want that dream because he and I are so—”

His breath catches in his throat. Eyes wide as a single tear slid down his cheek.

Then, all at once, his energy leaves him. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I don’t know what I’m saying.”

Alfred shook his head. “No. Don’t apologize. You have nothing to apologize for.” He met Danny’s gaze. Hoped that the boy would see the sincerity in his own eyes. “You are right. You are changed, Danny. I don’t know in what way, but you have changed and it is alright that you feel like a different person. Grief changes you, but it doesn’t mean you have to distance yourself from who you once were.”

Danny gripped the bannister tight. Fingers dug harshly into the stone. “I heard a lot that ‘time heals all wounds.’ ” He laughed humorlessly. “Is that actually true?”

“No,” Alfred said. “It doesn’t. The wound will never heal, but time will numb it enough that it no longer feels as painful.”

Danny looked at Alfred for a long moment, searching for something. The cold wind tousled his hair. Despite the frigid temperatures, Danny had not shivered even once.

Then, he spoke. “I still don’t think I can become an astronaut.”

Alfred’s gaze softened. “That’s alright. You’re still young, and you have plenty of time to decide what you want to do with it.”

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five.

Surprisingly—or perhaps, unsurprisingly—it was Master Bruce that pulled Danny out of the shadows of grief. Not completely, but…enough so that Danny began to finish everything on his plate and was unafraid to sleep some nights without waking up in nightmares.

Thomas and Martha were pleased, of course. For all Bruce’s brightness and endearing personality, he was so shy and struggled to make friends his own age. Danny at fourteen was still years older, but progress was progress. The Wayne couple would encourage the two’s friendship with a warm smile and an overindulgence in their antics. As long as Danny and Bruce didn’t leave the estate without their permission or stay out too late, the boys were free to wander as they liked.

In Alfred’s eyes, the connection between the two was obvious. Like called to like. Loneliness called to loneliness.

Once, Alfred caught the boys laying down in the soft grassy fields behind the manor. Their heads are pillowed by their arms, eyes craned towards the bright array of stars above, and willfully ignorant of the curfew they were breaking.

Danny lifted his arm to point at the sky. “See those three stars in a line?” he said to Bruce. “Those three stars make up Orion’s belt, and are the brightest stars in his constellation. See? If you follow it, you can sorta make the shape of a person.”

“I see it!” Master Bruce exclaimed. He traced a vague shape in the air. “There’s his chest. That, his arm. And look! I can even see his bow!”

“You know, a lot of people actually think that’s a shield.”

“But that looks nothing like a shield!”

Alfred couldn’t see for certain, but he felt that Danny would’ve shrugged at that statement. “Shield, bow, pelt of fur, doesn’t really matter in the end. The important thing was that you could see it. The ancient Mediterraneans used Orion as, like, an old calendar to know when it was a good time to thresh—that is, to separate the seeds from like a barley plant—their crops.” He moved his hand again. “The other cool thing about Orion is that it’s a good way to find other stars. See, if you follow the line of his belt away from his bow, you’ll find Sirius, which is the brightest star in the canis major constellation.”

“Is that his dog?”

“Yeah, that’s his dog. Sirius is also the brightest star in our night sky— well, after the sun at least. Anyway, if you follow the line of Orion’s belt towards the bow and even past it, you can see a cluster of stars way up there. There should be seven, but it might be hard to see all of them.”

“I think I see it? Is it that one?”

“Uh, a bit further— yep! That one. That’s the Pleiades, an open star cluster and probably one of the most well known stars in history. There’s actually way more than seven stars up there, but as far as seeing with the naked eye goes, we can only see seven. Like Orion, they were used to mark when it was a good time to harvest, but more than that, they were used by Greek sailors to know when it was a good time to sail. If the Pleiades were setting, or they were gone from the sky, then the seas would be too dangerous and it was better to go home.”

“What about that star over there?”

Alfred sees Danny shift, his head tilting towards the small lump that made up Master Bruce. “Which one?”

“Between the Pleiades and Orion there’s this really bright orange star.”

“Alpha Taurus. The brightest star in the Taurus constellation.” A beat. “Aldebaran, I think is its name. They call it ‘The Follower’ because it always follows after the Pleiades. Fun fact, it’s like over forty-times larger than the sun.”

“Really?” Alfred could hear the incredulity in Master Bruce’s voice. “It doesn’t look like it.”

“Well, all of those stars are lightyears away. They’re so far away that, technically, we’re not really seeing the stars. The light they give takes a long time to actually reach here on earth for us to see, so what we’re looking at is the light of a star from hundreds or thousands of years ago.”

Danny went quiet for a moment. “Really…for all we know, some of the stars we’re looking at have been dead for a while. Alive to us, but dead in reality. A weird kind of limbo.”

“Does it matter though?” Master Bruce said.

“What?”

He turned over, laying on his belly and holding himself up on his forearms. “Dead or alive? Does it matter?”

“I don’t…”

“I don’t think it does.” Master Bruce flopped back down to the grass. “If it’s alive, it’s alive. If it isn’t, then… it’s still alive in a way? My dad said that you’re never truly dead as long as someone remembers you, and as long as we see the star then it’ll always stay alive.”

Danny was silent for a moment.

Then he laughed and ruffled Bruce’s hair. “You know, Bruce, you’re way too smart for your age.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“No. Never. You kinda remind me of my sister a bit.”

Alfred’s breath hitched. It was the first time he had ever heard Danny willingly bring up his family since they first met.

“She was a huge know-it-all,” Danny continued. “Annoyed me a lot because everyone always noticed that I wasn’t smart like her, but…she had a big heart, like you.”

Danny hauled himself to his feet before offering an arm to Master Bruce. “Come on, we better head back before anyone notices that we snuck out past your bedtime.”

Master Bruce whined. “Can’t we stay a bit longer?”

“We can do this again tomorrow night.”

“Promise?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die and all that.”

The two walked arm in arm back through the patio entrance, Danny’s footsteps still that same eerie silence, and little Bruce’s slowly matching his gait to copy Danny’s movements. Neither were aware of Alfred, who clung to the shadows, watching his two boys go.

(Alfred said nothing of the boys’ late-night astronomy lessons. He continued to say nothing whenever he caught the two of them breaking curfew. Instead, he’d settle on a chair in a hidden nook that comfortably kept the two in sight, and watched the stars.)

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six.

Months passed, and slowly, Danny learned to move on. He ate more now. Smiled more. Laughed more. Lived more.

Danny was a delight to have in the Manor. He was an extra voice that bounced around the vast hallways, another plate set down for family meals, and a point of normalcy in the glittering world of the Waynes. He was Alfred’s apprentice in the kitchen, their handy mechanic when technology went awry, and Bruce’s ever watchful guardian.

Martha and Thomas loved him. Bruce adored him.

And Alfred?

Alfred could not help the little voice at the back of his head that wanted to call the boy his own. Danny was his nephew, his family along with the Waynes.

Despite all the tragedy that brought Danny to Gotham, Alfred could not help but be happy that Danny was here with them.

But Gotham was a cruel mistress.

And Happiness was as fragile as a string of pearls.

Alfred drove Bruce away from that godforsaken alley as soon as he could. The boy (eight years old, he was eight years old and stained in his own parents’ blood) shivered in the passenger seat, an officer’s jacket slung over his small frame. He was silent. Unmoving. Hollow eyes trained at the darkening sky ahead.

They reached the Manor to find Danny furiously pacing on the front steps, teeth worrying the end of his thumb. He froze as soon as Alfred stepped out of the black Bentley.

He jumped down the front steps, shoes skidding against the gravel. “Alfred?”

What happened?

Is everything alright?

Alfred could read every bit of Danny’s body language as if the boy was an open book. The tense line of his shoulders; the rigidness of his spine; the sudden depth of his respirations as if Danny was forcing himself to calm down but couldn’t quite get there in time. There was a wild sort of desperation in his eyes— but Danny wasn’t looking at Alfred. Wasn’t here. Not completely at least.

Some part of Danny was back in Amity again. A young boy like Master Bruce watching his whole world fall apart with a bang.

Alfred kept a stiff upper lip as he opened the passenger door and helped Master Bruce onto unsteady legs. He had to be strong now, for both his boys.

“Alfred,” Danny started again. “What— what happened? Where’s—” At the sight of Master Bruce, Danny stumbled to his knees.

“Bruce? Are you—” He cradled Bruce’s blood-stained cheek, fingers shaking.

Bruce spoke. The first words he’d said since Alfred came to get him. “What do I do, Danny?” His voice is shaking and raw and so small . The wind could almost carry it away. “They’re gone, Danny. My parents are gone, too.”

Alfred could see the instant Danny broke.

(Alfred could feel the second he broke, too.)

He pulled both his boys into his arms and held them tight. They were all each other had in this world, and Alfred begged to a god he hadn’t believed in for years that the world not separate them even more.

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seven.

It’s been a week.

Alfred found both boys curled up in the grassy fields behind Wayne Manor, staring at the dark expanse of night.

“I never want anyone else to go through what we did,” Bruce said.

A promise.

Danny turned to look at Bruce, a hand held out. Aldebaran shone bright and red above him. “Never again.”

A pact.

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eight.

When Bruce is midway through his first year of university and Danny is nearly finished with his bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering, the two of them dropped out of college, packed a bag each, and disappeared into the night.

They gave no word. They left no note.

Months later, they were declared dead. Another tragedy for the people of Gotham, who mourned their bright prince.

All of Bruce Wayne’s finances and belongings were left to Alfred, who continued to tend to them, as if any day Bruce Wayne and his smiling shadow would return.

Time passed.

The world turned.

Bruce Wayne and Danny Fenton remained dead.

Until one night, when the Pleiades had begun their descent from the sky, Alfred woke to a phone call. He held the phone to his ear, spoke into the receiver in hushed tones, and hung up a few minutes later.

He readies his uniform. Made sure that it was free of lint, and the fabric was ironed out of any wrinkles. He dressed, made himself presentable, and drove the black Bentley all the way to a lonely airfield on the outskirts of Gotham.

He waits.

He does not wait long. (He’s waited long enough.)

A small plane descends. Landed on the runway. Stopped.

An eternity, and the doors opened.

Out steps two young men, tall and lean, with whipcord muscles and scars that held stories that Alfred might never know. Their eyes are tired but bright. Hungry for vengeance, for justice, for Gotham .

Alfred smiled at his boys.

“Welcome home.”

#dpxdc #my writing.txt

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