Batman 4 - Batman & Robin (2 page)

He had to make sure someone was around if they needed help afterward—if there was an emergency. And there weren’t many other doctors skilled enough to cover for him.

Bruce and his parents reached the corner, turned, and went up the avenue. They saw dark, sky-spanning bridges and mighty office spires, the tops of which were swallowed by the storm.

Then they turned again. They passed a tall, gray church, a tiny food store with a Spanish sign, and a freight entrance to a dress factory and hurried on, the wind stinging Bruce’s cheeks.

Past more buildings. More shops, some of them shuttered. At some point, the boy realized he and his parents were the only people he could see in any direction.

But it was okay, he told himself. As long as he had his parents on either side of him, he had nothing to worry about. It was an adventure, that’s all. An adventure he could tell the kids about in school the next day.

At one point, Bruce thought he heard the scrape of footsteps on the sidewalk behind them. But when he glanced over his shoulder, he didn’t see anything. He chalked it up to his imagination.

By the time they reached the next corner, it was really coming down—a hissing, whispering barrage that slid past his collar and sent ice water down his neck. His parents tugged him along, no doubt as blinded as the boy was by the sheeting deluge and just as eager to get out of it.

They rushed down the avenue and then up another street. And then stopped. Bruce’s father looked around, his breath making a vapor trail.

“Where’s the car?” he asked.

The boy looked around, too, as if he could shed some light on the problem. But of course, he couldn’t.

His mother shook her head. “I don’t know. But if we don’t find it soon, Bruce is going to catch a cold.”

“Nonsense, Martha,” said his father. “You don’t catch a cold from the weather.” But the lines in his face showed that he was concerned. “Not to worry,” he said in a softer voice, hugging the boy to him with one arm and his wife with the other. “It must be on the next street.”

But halfway up the next street, Bruce’s father began muttering under his breath. “It’s not here either. It’s got to be the next one.”

“Thomas . . .” said his mother.

Then his father pointed. Following the gesture, Bruce saw the alley mouth that opened across the street from them. It was shadowy, full of garbage cans and windswept debris.

“I remember now,” said his father. “There was an alley right nearby. The car is just on the other side.”

“Are you sure?” asked the boy’s mother.

His father nodded, his hair and moustache crusted with sleet. “I’m sure. Come on.”

He led them across the street and into the alley. The place was dark and foreboding and full of puddles, but Bruce could see a streetlight at the other end. With his mother on one side of him and his father on the other, he put his head down and made his way against the wind.

It’s okay,
the boy assured himself.
It’s almost over. We’ll be home before we know it and there’ll be a fire in the
—

Suddenly, he heard a voice ring out. As it echoed in the narrow confines of the alley, Bruce turned and saw a man standing behind them. A man in a cap and a leather jacket. He had something in his hand.

“What?” asked the boy’s father. Apparently, he hadn’t heard what the man said either.

The man came closer. And Bruce realized what he’d seen in the man’s hand. It was a gun.

Bruce felt a terrible
chill
—an arctic cold that seemed to reach into his bowels and freeze them solid. His heart beat heavily in his chest, a trapped animal desperately trying to get out.

“What do you want?” Thomas Wayne demanded.

There was a moment of silence. The boy listened closely, expecting the man to answer. But the man didn’t open his mouth.

Instead, a flare of blue-white fire came out of his gun—and there was a crack. Like the sound of Zorro’s whip, but louder. As loud as thunder splitting the heavens.

Bruce’s father grunted. As if mired in slow motion, the boy looked at him—saw his father double over in pain. Then he fell to the ground, still clutching at himself.

No,
thought Bruce, his mind refusing to accept the evidence of his eyes.
No. Not my
father . . .

Then there was another peal of thunder. And as he watched, horrified, his mother went spinning away from him, the string of pearls around her neck breaking free and scattering over the pavement.

Mother?
he screamed inwardly. And then, even more frantically, more disbelievingly, he screamed it aloud.

“Mother?”

But she couldn’t answer. Martha Wayne just lay there, her blood pooling on the darkly glistening ground around her, her arm stretched toward the equally motionless body of her husband.

Bruce’s hands climbed to his mouth, became fists as the man with the gun reached inside his father’s coat and took something off his mother’s wrist. The boy yelled something at him, he didn’t know what, caught in a tide of horror and anger and despair.

Then the gunman was gone. Bruce approached his parents’ bodies, touched them—felt the absence of life and hope and sank down between them on the hard, wet ground.

In the distance, he heard footsteps. Clear and sharp, but retreating. Fading into nothingness. Then, after a time, there was another sound—the strident skirl of a siren, growing louder and louder, until it filled the whole world with its complaint.

He looked up at the whirling lights of a police car. Saw the policemen get out, guns drawn. Heard one of them call for an ambulance.

But it was too late. Bruce knew that.

It was cold, he thought. It was so
cold.
And now he was all alone in the storm.

Alfred stood by one of the immensely tall windows in the living room of Wayne Manor. He watched a forlorn flock of geese navigate an iron gray sky. Like so much of Nature, the geese were retreating before the inevitable onset of winter.

A tiny figure was standing in the snow-dusted field outside the mansion, looking up at the geese as Alfred was. But despite the chill, he wasn’t retreating. Not from winter or anything else.

“Mr. Pennyworth?”

The butler turned and regarded the stout, balding gentleman sitting in the master’s easy chair. Or at least, what
had
been the master’s easy chair until a couple of miserable weeks ago. The man’s cup sat on a coaster, which in turn sat on an eighteenth-century end table.

“More tea, sir?” Alfred asked.

“No,” said the stout man. “Thank you. But you see what I’m saying, don’t you? About the danger?”

“To Master Bruce,” the butler replied.

“Precisely,” said the stout man. “As you’re aware, Mr. Pennyworth, I’ve treated a great many victims of severe psychological trauma. And in every case, the reaction to that trauma has been rather obvious.

“Sometimes, it takes the form of aggression—a desire to strike back at one’s fate, if you will, often wildly and indiscriminately. In other instances, we see a withdrawal from life, a shoring up of the mind’s defenses that in the extreme approaches catatonia. Or, as an alternative, the patient sinks into a deep morass of despair, afraid to ever again invest his love and trust in another human being.”

“And yet?” Alfred responded. For an “and yet” seemed rather implicit in the psychiatrist’s tone.

“And yet,” the stout man went on, “none of these behaviors is observable in Master Bruce. To all outward appearances, he is a normal boy. Or at least, as normal as he was before the . . . er, incident.” He blushed.

It was an awkward moment to be sure. After all, Alfred had been affected by the
incident
as well. True, he had served as the Waynes’ butler only for a brief period of time, and had never expected to remain here for long. But by the time of their deaths, he had grown exceedingly fond of his employers, and he gathered that was evident in his behavior.

“Yes,” Alfred said, doing his best to affect the psychiatrist’s clinical tone. “The incident. Please continue.”

The stout man folded his hands across his ample belly. “As I understand it, the boy has always been something of a loner. No steady playmates, no other child to whom he’s been particularly close.”

“True,” the butler confirmed. “However, that was hardly anyone’s choice. The vast majority of Master Bruce’s schoolmates live on the other side of town, and it simply was not practical for him to engage in regular visits.”

The psychiatrist smiled sympathetically. “I didn’t mean to imply otherwise, Mr. Pennyworth. I’m only pointing out that the boy wasn’t particularly gregarious to begin with, so one wouldn’t look for him to be gregarious now.” He paused. “As I say, normal. At least, on the outside.”

“But not on the inside?” Alfred sighed.

The stout man’s expression waxed more serious. “No. And therein lies his peril. You see, young Bruce may seem quite the stalwart, but there’s still a child beneath that veneer of calm acceptance. A child who’s experienced a greater trauma than you or I can ever comprehend.”

Alfred glanced at the strangely resolute figure in the wintry field. The geese were gone now, but the boy was still staring at something.

“Don’t be fooled, Mr. Pennyworth. The day will come when that veneer crumbles, and the boy reacts to the memory of his ordeal. Such matters may be postponed, but not indefinitely. And the longer this one is delayed, the greater the damage will be to his psyche.”

Alfred nodded, his eyes still on the figure. “I see.”

“Which makes it all the more important to encourage young Bruce to come to grips with his fate. To open himself up to it and embrace it sooner rather than later, no matter how painful it may be for him.”

The butler nodded again. “This, then, will be the course of your treatment? To bring his feelings about his parents’ murder out into the open?”

“Yes. Otherwise, he may simply explode one day. And he may not be the only one hurt in that explosion.”

Alfred swallowed at the prospect. “You’ve spoken of this with Master Bruce’s uncle Philip?”

“I have,” the stout man confirmed. “He says he values your opinion more than his own. You’ve lived with the boy day in and day out, he tells me, and he has not.”

The butler considered his young charge. He knew the stout man was right. There was a great deal of pain contained in that tiny vessel. Somehow, it had to be let out.

“Tell me,” he said. “What is your prognosis?”

The psychiatrist paused. “Even in the simplest cases, it’s difficult to say. We’re not talking about a broken leg or a torn muscle here. We’re talking about a wound to the soul,”

“Still,” Alfred pressed, “how do you think this will all come out? Off the record, if you prefer.”

Another pause. “I am not terribly optimistic,” the stout man admitted. “But I assure you, I will do my best.”

The butler frowned. It didn’t seem he had much choice in the matter. Before his death, Thomas Wayne had spoken highly of the stout man. If Master Bruce was going to receive treatment, it might as well come from someone his father had known and respected.

“Very well,” Alfred said at last. “Please let me know when you would like to see Master Bruce. I will make certain he is present.”

“Excellent,” the psychiatrist remarked. With a bit of an effort, he got to his feet. “Just one more thing, Mr. Pennyworth.”

Alfred looked at him. “Yes?”

“Forgive me, but Mr. Wayne once described your employment here as temporary. He mentioned that your first love is the theater—and that you hope to return to it one day.”

“It had occurred to me,” Alfred conceded.

The stout man’s brow furrowed. “Normally, it would be none of my business—but I ask out of concern for young Bruce. He’s already lost the two most important people in the world to him. I don’t know how close you and he have become, but right now you’re the only real constant in his life.”

“And if I have any intentions of leaving, it would be a good idea to speak of them now,” Alfred said, picking up on the thought. “So I can be eased out of the boy’s life.”

The psychiatrist eyed him. “That’s the gist of it, yes.”

The butler glanced again at the boy. He was still standing there in the field, his eyes fixed on only-God-knew-what, the weight of the world on his narrow little shoulders.

“No,” said Alfred. “It may once have been true that I considered myself a transient in this house. But it is true no longer. I intend to remain here for the duration.”

However long that may be,
he added inwardly, matching his resolve to that of the lonely child outside.