“Do you think you could have stopped him?”
Alfred didn’t turn, continuing his inventory within the small medical area in the cave. Peter had long ago realized, while his assistance could make the post-care clean up go faster, it was something of a ritual for the older man - a way to settle, lower the adrenaline that came from performing emergency medicine on his pseudo-son who now slept in the medical cot that laid between them.
Peter’s own ritual was turning whatever series of events it took to be in the medical area in the first place over and over and over in his mind until he had some understanding of where things had gone wrong and what he could do next time, if there ever were a situation similar enough. It was one of the more productive quirks he and Bruce had in common.
“I know it’s too late now, but do you think you could’ve? At the beginning, I mean?”
Something there finally made Alfred pause, hand stilling where he was writing out the supplies they’d used to patch Bruce up. For a moment, they sat in silence.
“I have long moved past speculation of that sort, Master Peter.”
Alfred returned to the inventory and Peter continued to contemplate in the bedside chair, feet crossed on the bed next to Bruce’s side, as relaxed as he could be with his closest friend still knocked out from drugs and exhaustion, though now they knew he was stable and healing.
The two of them were much too similar in some respects, but Peter didn’t think he’d ever had a chance to avoid this life in the same way Bruce may have had. There’d been over a decade between the Wayne murders and when Bruce chose to travel and learn and train, where he could have been pushed down any other path. Would he have let himself be redirected? No, Bruce had survived his training thanks to the very tenacity that would have prevented anyone, even Alfred, from convincing him to do anything other than throw his whole being at what he deemed the problem. The Mission.
But a decade… What happened in ten years that convinced Bruce this was the solution? What didn’t happen?
While Peter had known tragedy from a young age, too, he had neither the want nor the means to give any sort of justice thought until Ben. Granted, he hadn’t known his parents’ deaths were due to anything nefarious until long after they were gone, having lived the majority of his life so far thinking he’d lost them in a freak accident. He’d continued to be loved and cared for by his aunt and uncle, just another orphan in a world that wouldn’t have looked at him twice.
Bruce had nearly been a part of the tragedy. His family had been and still was so known and powerful, there was no guarantee any well-wisher or potential carer, outside Alfred, would have had his best interests at heart. Everywhere he went, people knew one of the most intimate parts of him, whether they realized it or not.
Peter couldn’t help but think of Tony. Bruce and his former mentor were so similar in so many ways it wasn’t hard to see the paths Bruce could have gone down if he hadn’t had Alfred and instead was exposed and influenced and controlled by someone like Obadiah Stane. Would Bruce have eventually become a hero like Tony had, with the drive and near-neurotic need to do good that, in this universe, seemed so integral to him, to the Batman? Or would he have been consumed by the agony, the heartbreak, perhaps turned down another path? For all anyone knows, he could’ve become something so much worse.
In another world, maybe Tony had been that thing. That worse. Peter had enough distance now to admit he could see it, in the missteps fueled by arrogance (or was it a strong self-assuredness?) and guilt. Two overwhelming emotions that, at the most basic level, led to Tony’s death.
Peter could see why Alfred didn’t bother thinking about this anymore. He could hardly bear thinking about what the person on the bed in front of him could have been, when who Bruce was now was so important to him, having been nearly the center of Peter’s universe for what felt like forever.
Had it really only been two years since they’d met? Well, hardship bonds people and all that.
“Do you think…he will ever stop?”
Peter had never heard Alfred, typically so resolute, sound so uncertain. Peter looked to where the older man’s back was still turned, though his hands laid unmoving on the metal counter before him, having put the supplies, the inventory, his pen back where each belonged. He could feel his brow furrow as he considered Alfred’s question alongside all the unasked ones behind it.
Is this what life will be forever - both mine and his? When will it be enough? Will it ever be enough?
At the same time, Peter knew Alfred only asked because he already knew the answers, but could only pray they weren’t true.
“No,” Honesty was the best way to go with both Alfred and Bruce, a lesson hard learned, “No, I don’t think, as things are now, he’ll stop of his own volition.”
And weren’t those a couple of powerful qualifiers: as things are now and of his own volition.
“I’ve known many heroes. I think, regardless of why they’re a hero, being one, no matter how big or small, means they’ll suffer and fight for others. For what’s right. Always.”
It wasn’t a comfort exactly, and it wasn’t meant to be one. Alfred already knew Bruce would fight for others, to keep them from the hurt he’d experienced. He already knew Bruce was better than most people, though the kindness was one the young Wayne refused to see in himself. Alfred and Peter were still working on that. What mattered more to Alfred was would his charge, his son (and that relationship was a whole other bottle of complicated), always have to endure the suffering in their place? Would Bruce ever know peace? Would Bruce ever choose peace?
No, Bruce would never choose peace, as things are now and of his own volition.
The real tragedy of being a hero is wishing the world only needed one, only needed you. Knowing you’d never wish this life on another, but, most of the time, being so, so grateful there were others anyway.
“Do you think I could stop him now?”
This time, Alfred turned to ask, but Peter couldn’t return his gaze.
“Someone tried to stop me,” Peter admitted quietly. It wasn’t something he’d told anyone here, not even Bruce, not fully. “He was to me what you are to Bruce. Or he could’ve been. Would’ve been… Maybe.”
Peter could only slump further in the chair, legs still up and crossed, no energy to move and almost scared to, afraid it would give away too much, share more than what he was willing beyond what he had decided to say aloud.
“He did what he could to force me to stop. But I’d already had a taste of it. More than a taste really. He’d let me at first, enabled me even, though I doubt he thought of it like that. I could only see what he was trying to do, stop me that is, as an indication of my own failure, a validation to every time I’d thought to myself ‘I’m not good enough.’
“It put me through hell. Both of us, I think. Made him reevaluate some things, solidified my need to do this. That I’d…I’d do near anything to keep this.”
Peter thought of those months he’d shoved what felt like his whole identity into a little box and buried it under six feet of grief, doubt, and rage. Literally losing himself in an effort to wear someone else’s idea of a life.
Alfred considered his words, the uncomfortable truths Peter tried not to think about. Like how empty he’d been, patching a sinking ship with bubble gum that had long lost its flavor. Knowing the great responsibility his great power both bound him to and gifted him with, and yet...
“It ruined…a lot of things. Still does. Likely always will. But,” Peter’s breath caught with the force of how ingrained this life was, how it was written on his very soul, “I can’t stop.”
Peter finally turned from Bruce’s slack face to Alfred’s intense, though sorrowful, stare.
“He can’t stop. It’s too late.”
Not as things are now and not of his own volition.
Silent tears tracked down Alfred’s face, following the lines and wrinkles around his eyes and mouth. It was a sad trait for him and Bruce to have in common, the mute suffering. It spoke volumes. It made Alfred suddenly look his age.
Peter didn’t say you never would have stopped him, anyway. That was a thought too cruel to share aloud. It was a truth Alfred undoubtedly knew already.