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The warmth of the mug of tea cradled in his hands seeped into his cold skin and seemed to reach the innermost cells in his body, the very marrow of his bones. Tim leaned forwards, forearms braced on the table, and continued holding that mug more than drinking it.
At the cooking station, Alfred, with his back turned to Tim, was busy whipping up something or other with the characteristic vigorousness that they'd all come to expect of him in all manner of things but especially the kitchen. Opposing scents battled for dominance as the sweet smell of something baking in the oven filled the kitchen with just as much intensity as the chest-warming and mouth-watering smell of buttery garlic and gently bubbling potato and beef did.
It smelled familiar. It smelled like home.
Tim swallowed harshly and fiddled with his mug as he thought, eventually bringing himself to lift it to his lips and take a small sip. The spicy-sweet taste of cardamom exploded on his tongue and Tim sighed in pleasure, shoulders going lax in comfort. He didn't have many fond memories from his time with the League, but the numerous Arabic teas he'd shared with Owens, Z, and Pru were one of them. Alfred's blend was damn near perfect, imported from abroad especially for Tim when he expressed a new-found interest in tea drinking, and all that was missing was the warmth of his companions knocking shoulders with him as the desert sun set on their odd little group, the fire of their makeshift camp casting more shadows on their laughing faces the further down the sun went.
It hurt, but it was a good kind of hurt. The one that twisted you all up inside but brought forth the sweetness of good memories, the light in what felt like a never-ending abyss. He missed Z and Owens, maybe he always would. But he was glad for the time they had together, short as it was.
“I don't think I've thanked you for what you did yet, my boy,” Alfred spoke up out of the blue, drawing Tim out of his reminiscing and his gaze away from the gently rippling surface of his tea. His back was to him, still, posture relaxed in a way that Tim knew meant ‘carefully controlled’, arms moving from pot to pan, from stirring to whisking, without missing a beat.
“Don't need thanks,” Tim answered, perhaps a bit too gruffly, too roughly, too meanly. But it was the truth – he needed no thanks for chasing after the ghost of his father and bringing him back where he belonged. “Family don't thank each other.”
Alfred paused, just long enough for his brief stillness to be noted, before he continued as if nothing happened.
“True enough. Yet I still feel I must thank you. You brought me back my son, Timothy. I hardly think I can thank you enough.”
Alfred sounded choked up but it was hard to tell with his refusal to actually turn around and look Tim in the eye. Tim was plenty used to it – the butler was so painfully posh, old school British about so many things, it was infuriating sometimes. He was a frustrating blend of aloof and grandfatherly, professional and attached. It was hard to know which side you would get in any given situation, where Alfred would choose to step in and act like the family member everyone saw him as and when he would sit on the sidelines, like he was nothing more than an employee, and let things unfold as they would, even as he had the power, the authority, the respect afforded to him to influence the outcome.
It was something that had never sat right with Tim.
He loved Alfred, of course he did. He loved him just like he loved the rest of this fucked up family. But there was a part of him, one that had especially grown louder after his departure from Gotham, that condemned Alfred for many things, starting with allowing a thirteen year old to pull Bruce out of his grief instead of stepping in himself but not ending there. Never ending there.
Tim couldn't quite forget the numerous times he'd overheard Alfred blaming Jason, more or less, for getting himself killed, as a way to assuage Bruce's guilt and absolve him of any responsibility he should have felt for the incident. As if Bruce hadn't contributed to pushing Jason away (from the little he'd managed to glean from old reports written by his predecessor as well as the sparse few times Dick opened up about his first brother) and the tragic fate that befell the fifteen year old. He couldn't quite forget the empty room, devoid of any trace of a young teenager who'd once lived there, that used to belong to a young Jason Todd-Wayne. Couldn't forget the memorial case of a tattered Robin suit stitched together, the plaque that reduced that boy to a simple soldier, Alfred's conspicuous absence when Bruce broke down in tears with the cowl held tightly in gloved hands and Tim was the only soul around to witness it and try to comfort a parent's unending grief, the ‘present’ his dad and mentor gave him at sixteen and Alfred's willing and remorseless participation in the fucked up thought experiment.
Couldn't forget that it was Alfred who sent Damian out with a Robin tunic while Tim was very much still wearing the Boy Wonder's colours.
Sure, Dick made the decision to give it to Damian officially and to hell with what Tim thought, and sure, it had been an emergency when Alfred did that, but Tim thought that he could be mad about that, too, on top of everything else he held against Alfred. Even if it made him petty.
“I didn't do it for you,” Tim eventually spoke and his voice was more tired than biting, in spite of the simmering resentment, old and bitter like his feelings, that tended to rise up if he thought about what a let down of an adult Alfred Pennyworth had turned out to be. “My dad was missing and I was the only one willing and able to look for him. I wasn't going to abandon him.”
Like you abandoned me went unsaid but Tim felt like it was loud and clear nonetheless.
The old, hurt feelings of being on his own threatened to drown him again but he gripped his mug tighter and took a deep whiff of his cardamom tea instead of letting them overtake him. He'd had a long time to stew in those feelings. To turn the thoughts round and round in his brain, up late at night in Ra's’ base as he stared at the ceiling with Tam's breathing at his side a comforting reassurance that he wasn't completely alone yet a source of guilt and fear that he'd dragged an innocent into his fucked up mess of issues.
He didn't know if he could forgive Alfred as easily as he'd decided to forgive Dick. He didn't think he had it in him.
With Dick, it was easy. He was his brother. His big brother. The one who had taught him how to fly and always caught him, even when Tim himself wasn't sure he wanted to be caught. Their relationship had never been perfect, but they'd been brothers in every sense of the word for years before Dick's big fuck up. It hurt and he doubted he would ever forget, but forgiving Dick came as naturally as breathing. They were in this together, after all, whatever ‘this’ ended up being, and for the longest time it'd been them against the world – before Cass, before Jason coming back, before Damian showing up.
And in Tim's most generous moments, when he remembered that Dick wasn't perfect, was only human, when he thought a bit too long about his brother and realised that, while it felt like he loomed larger than life and had his shit together in a way Tim never would, he realised that Dick was still so painfully young and had been totally unprepared to handle everything thrown at him after Bruce ‘died’. It didn't make things better, per se, but it did make it harder for Tim to throw stones at his brother, when he didn't know how much better he would've handled things.
But Alfred had no excuses.
Alfred was the true definition of a grown ass man. He knew better. He should've done more. Should've stepped up when Dick needed him in the way that he needed, not in the way Bruce's mission did. To everyone, Bruce had been dead and gone. But Dick was there and he was struggling. Tim was there and he was grieving and he was hurting and he needed so much support but no one could give it, not in a way that mattered, and when it really mattered most, when he needed someone to believe him or at least fake it convincingly enough, where was Alfred?
On the sidelines, like usual. Not getting involved. Staying out of it.
Except for the times when it suited him to step in.
“Master Tim, you… you have given so much in exchange for getting your father back. And I have made a lot of mistakes in my life, many towards you specifically, which I can never undo. But there is this one thing I can do, which is thank you and acknowledge your achievements and sacrifices.”
Tim lifted his eyes from his mug, not even knowing when he'd let his gaze drift down again, and for the first time since Tim had sat down with his tea, Alfred's blue eyes met his own. They were dry, despite the earlier shakiness of voice, but they held a world of emotions that Tim couldn't hope to name.
They were old. They felt a million miles away.
“What good does that do if the next time I need you, you do the same thing again?” Tim asked rhetorically, woodenly.
“I would n–”
“But you will,” Tim interrupted, not giving a shit if he was being rude. “You always do. You never stand up for us, Alf. You let Bruce kick Dick out, you let him treat Jason like shit for something he couldn't even prove he did, you did nothing when Bruce was drowning in grief and nearly killing himself and half of Gotham! Every time, without fail, you do nothing! And then you act contrite and apologise and throw flowery words at the offended party. And everyone forgives you! Because why wouldn't they? ‘Alfred is so nice’, ‘Alfred can do no wrong’, ‘Alfred is a saint’. But you're not, are you?”
Tim couldn't help exploding even if he tried. His hands tightened around that mug so tightly he was afraid it would shatter if he increased the pressure any longer, but it was either that or digging his nails into his own palms and he preferred to risk broken crockery over self-inflicted injuries. Alfred, meanwhile, had gone stock still as he stared at Tim. His eyes went blank, all emotion seemingly wiped away, but the way he was gripping that wooden spoon said that he was pissed.
Tim didn't care. He could be angry all he wanted, Tim was tired of keeping his mouth shut. All his life he'd swallowed his words – at his parents, when he wanted to tell them that loving him was not enough if they didn't stick around, at Bruce, during those first, hard days when Tim wasn't sure if being Robin was worth it, at everyone who ever wronged him but felt too grown, too untouchable, for his words to reach them and make an impact.
Eventually, the old butler seemed to get himself together enough to reply, “Perhaps you are correct.”
His voice was quiet. Ashamed, if Tim dared to read into it. It, quite frankly, shocked Tim, enough to make him let go of his lifeline of a mug and sit up straight.
“Excuse me?” Tim questioned, full of disbelief.
Alfred huffed, so unlike the prim and proper gentleman he always carried himself as, and turned around for a moment to turn off the stove top and oven before he spun back around to face him.
“You're right, Tim. I'm a hypocrite. I was a terrible parent to your father and I continued the tradition the more of you kids showed up. I hardly deserve this family's love and respect, not after everything I've done – or haven't done, as is the case. Yet I am still grateful for every bit of it and I am grateful that you can still bring yourself to sit here and share a kitchen with me and not curse me to hell and back for all the pain I indirectly put you through. I will not apologise for I do not deserve your forgiveness. I will, however, vow to you, here and now, that from this day forward I will not repeat those mistakes again.”
“I…” Tim didn't know how to react. He didn't know what to feel. It felt… like too much. Too unreal. Too convenient, perhaps. What, he yelled at Alfred a little and he had a change of heart? Just like that? That was all it took?
But he didn't want to stay mad either. It was exhausting. It drained you. And being mad at Alfred had never achieved anything anyway.
He didn't know if he could believe the old man's words. Didn't trust that he wouldn't do the same thing he'd always done and revert back to old habits when push came to shove. But… he could admit that everyone deserved a chance to change, especially when they seemed so determined to do it. He wouldn't hold his breath, but he was willing to bury the hatchet for the time being.
“Fine,” he exhaled at last. “You do that. But…”
Alfred raised an eyebrow in prompting. “But?”
“If you fuck up again, next time I yell at you won't be in private like today.”
The old man smiled, a bit stiff but genuine nonetheless, and he inclined his head towards Tim.
“I expect nothing less,” he acknowledged, holding Tim's gaze for the stretch of a few, meaningful seconds, then he spun around towards the cooking station and turned the stove back on before picking up a bowl and pouring something out into a pan.
Tim drained his remaining tea, a heavy knot in his throat that he didn't want to dwell on at the moment, then put his empty mug in the dishwasher before fleeing from the kitchen. On his way upstairs he ran into Dick, wet from the rain and grumbling under his breath about idiot drivers splashing everyone in their way.
“Everything alright, baby bird?” Dick asked, lifting his cerulean eyes and squinting at him from underneath the damp curls flopping in his face. His eyes crinkled at the corners with the warm smile he directed at Tim.
“Never better, Dickie,” Tim said, lying only partially, and the beaming grin his brother shot in his direction was warm enough to chase away the tingling chill his tea hadn't been able to eradicate completely.
“I got you some donuts from that bakery you like. Hopefully they haven't drowned on the way here,” he grumbled.
Tim laughed, loud and bright, and looped his arm with Dick's as he started to drag his wet brother upstairs with a spring in his step.
“Sure. Let's get you in the shower before you catch a cold and then I'll check on the donuts.”