Groomed
I saw a post the other day of the times where Alfred was not the saint that fandom tends to portray him as, which I cannot find any longer. That post collided in my head with the memory of a different post that I also cannot find, of Alfred having a romantic affair with Ra’s Al Ghul during Bruce’s childhood, before they parted ways over moral differences. This is the result of those musings.
As always ignore any canon that contradicts this.
There is build up long before Bruce is even born. Alfred Pennyworth is a man who believes in causes. A Mission or Calling to have loyalty to. He is not a man who gives his loyalty to people, in fact he does not connect well to people outside of a Calling/Mission (capital intended) and has no problem abandoning even the people closest to him when it serves his Calling. Ironically he is a man that holds a great deal of admiration for leaders who are willing to risk their own lives or safety for their Calling, and a great deal of disdain for leaders that are only willing to risk other people.
Alfred will always hold a great deal of admiration for Queen Elizabeth, because she was an ambulance driver during the war. But that is a side note.
While Ra’s Al Ghul certainly is more than willing to sacrifice his minions, and his danger scale is skewed by the Lazarus water, he is also willing to put himself in the line of fire when necessary.
Alfred met Ra’s as a young man, during the height of his time as a Spy for England. The two hit it off immediately, having similar morals (anything for the Cause), little personal loyalty, and a respect for a person's Cause (even if it is contrary to their own). This is an on and off relationship that lasts several decades during which Ra’s does convert Alfred to at least the base tenets of his own Cause(making the world better through controlling it and the violence within it).
The off parts tend to come from what Alfred considers Ra’s over reliance on the Lazarus Pits. Alfred is willing to admit their use, but see’s Ra’s use as some more akin to an addiction and ultimately getting in the way of the Cause. Alfred has used the Pits once or twice.
Talia knows vaguely of Alfred but has never met him.
The pair are in an off stage when Alfred goes to Gotham. He is there to obtain (steal) some relic or another that is being held by the Waynes that would advance The Cause, and incidentally help Ra’s gain control over Gotham. He becomes the Wayne’s butler and is very good at making them trust him, almost to the exclusion of the other staff members who had been there longer. Knowing that he would need the time to search and a mostly empty manor to search in, Alfred slowly worked to get rid of the other household staff. By the time of Bruce’s birth, Alfred is one of only a few full time staff in residence in the manor and the person that Martha and Thomas trust the most.
Alfred has still not found this hidden relic by the time Bruce is left orphaned. He has begun speaking with Ra’s again. They decide that Bruce would be the perfect warrior for their Cause, not to mention if Bruce has a child with Talia, then the Wayne fortune would eventually belong to the Al Ghuls.
Bruce is already predisposed to trusting Alfred above everyone, and Alfred slowly isolates Bruce even further from both Bruce’s peers and the friends of Bruce’s parents. The only one Alfred cannot completely drive away is Leslie Thompkins, but by the time she realizes what is happening Bruce is a teenager and ensnared by Alfred’s machinations.
Alfred makes sure to instill a sense of duty so extreme that it deserves its own zip code. It is Alfred who first shaped The Mission, all the while subtly training Bruce in the ways of being a spy. When the time was right, Alfred manipulated Bruce into traveling and set him on the path to meet Ra’s, for what should have been the final aspects of his training.
The only part that Alfred did not, could not take into account was Bruce’s own internal morality. Bruce’s unwillingness to kill, for any reason, drove him from Ra’s clutches. You see, Alfred trained into Bruce ‘Loyalty to the Mission’; also extensive paranoia, a need to have contingencies for everything, and a way of compartmentalizing that can make Bruce seem like a massive asshole. But Bruce, by nature, tended toward a mindset of loyalty to people first. While it seems counterintuitive, this is the very reason that Alfred can get away with any behavior once he has gained Bruce’s loyalty.
Bruce returns to Gotham to become Batman, never knowing about Alfred’s connection to Ra’s or that Talia was pregnant.
As stated, there is one thing Alfred respects, and that is a Mission. Even though Batman is not the mission that Alfred wanted Bruce to be called to, he does respect The Mission, and Bruce’s dedication to it, enough to stay and help Bruce be Batman.
When Bruce finds Dick, at first all Alfred can see is a distraction from Bruce’s Mission. Thus he does not like Dick…until Dick becomes Robin, becomes part of the Mission. Then it becomes Alfred’s privilege to shape Dick just like he did Bruce. Dick has no reason to believe that the things that Alfred taught him was abnormal. And Bruce recognized those training methods and trusts Alfred beyond reason.
Bruce never admits, even to himself, that there are times when the training Alfred insists on putting Dick through, the things that Bruce helps with make Bruce uneasy. But he trusts Alfred, so when Alfred convinced Bruce that there is no need to find a therapist for himself or Dick (no matter Dinah Lance’s suggestion), Bruce followed along. When Alfred says that the greatest honor for the dead Jason Todd is ‘a good soldier’ Bruce went along. Bruce pretended it was his own idea to break Tim Drake's trust in people as a 16th birthday present.
Basically every instance of Bruce being a massive asshole and or abusive was either caused by Alfred, or (more more rarely) rooted in the deep, untreated trauma that Bruce has regarding grief.
None of his children realize this. Dick and Tim do not have the background to realize that the way that Alfred, and by extension Bruce, trained him was abnormal or abusive; each in different ways but still. Jason, and Steph, believed a little bit too firmly that the rich were ALWAYS the root of all evil and identified more closely with Alfred who to their perception worked for a living so anything they noticed or perceived being wrong was Bruce’s fault. Cass’s and Damian’s childhood was abusive in ways that resonated with Alfred’s training regime, so it felt familiar instead of threatening. Duke (who in this one was fostered about six months before Bruce’s time travel) simply had not been part of the family long enough to experience the full training.
Ironically in this one Damian actually stopped trying to kill Tim after the first attempt. This is because Alfred saw value in Tim as part of The Mission and made Damian stop.
Bruce still goes on his bounce through time. Tim still has to cut himself off from the hero community to find him. This time Dick was pushed by Alfred to believe that Tim was losing his mind for believing that Bruce lived. Alfred had basically lost interest in Bruce upon hearing of his death and instead was focusing on continuing The Mission through reshaping Dick into Batman. Alfred was also using this time as an excuse to push Tim toward Ras, whom Alfred was still in a romantic relationship with (as long as that relationship does not interfere with Batman’s mission). Tim often reminded Alfred of himself, so Alfed wanted Tim to believe in Ras’ mission.
One thing about this Alfred is that he fundamentally misunderstands the driving force of his charges. Oh he understands that Batman’s Mission is to fight crime, but does not understand that Bruce fought crime specifically so that no one would suffer like Bruce suffered. People, and loving people, are Bruce’s driving force. Bruce became Batman because Alfred convinced him that this was the only way to truly help. He makes a similar mistake with Tim. Alfred sees Tim's ability to compartmentalize and his dogged determination to do what he thinks is right, regardless of anyone else’s opinion and assumes that Tim is like Alfred. However, like Bruce, Tim is driven by love. Tim loved Batman and Robin long before he joined Batman’s mission. Tim loved Gotham and her people.
Tim is not brought over to Ra’s way of thinking. Tim is dogged in his determination to bring Bruce home and succeeds. But Tim’s love, just like Bruce’s, blinds him to Alfred’s machinations.
No it is not any member of the Batfam that realizes what is going on.
What happens is that Bruce spends a lot of time thinking while he is stuck in the timestream. About how he has treated his children, about how he had treated his friends, about how afraid he feels all the time, even about how he (feels) he has treated Alfred, whom he loves like a father but never acknowledged as such. He does not come to the conclusion that he had been manipulated by Alfred. Instead he comes to the conclusion that there is something deeply wrong with Bruce himself. Something that Bruce has to fix, before he hurts the people he loves further.
With Dinah’s help he finds a therapist to speak to, as he is too close to Dinah for her to be an effective therapist for him. This is during the time that he is recovering from the time stream ordeal, so he is still not going out as Batman. For once he does not tell Alfred what he is doing. It helps that Alfred does not seem as interested in what Bruce is doing right now. By the time that Bruce has taken up the Batman mantle once more, the discussions with the therapist have started to put cracks in Bruce’s trust in Alfred and his methods. Just hairline things but enough.
At the same time Tim, who now has some experience with the League of Assassins and also superb pattern recognition, has also started noticing some disquieting things about the way Alfred acts. Tim very quietly brings these concerns to Dick (who has also been noticing the way Alfred had interacted with Dick while Dick was wearing the cowl, particularly after Bruce returned but before Bruce took the mantle back) and Cass. Dick was the one wot, very carefully, bring up what they were all noticing with Jason (who could be volatile and thought Alfred could do no wrong).
Thus when Bruce started showing interest in their non vigilante/ non work related interests, but seemed to be only asking those questions when Alfred was not around, none of the kids said anything or confronted Bruce. They just went with it.
This goes on for almost a year. Then Bruce does something he has not ever done, not really. He says no to Alfred. Alfred had been pushing to give Damian training akin to Tim’s 16th birthday. Bruce refuses. What follows is not so much an argument as it is Alfred leveraging every piece of emotional blackmail, particularly things he instilled in Bruce, to try and bring Bruce back under control. For once, Alfred fails and the discussion ends with Bruce asking Alfred to pack his things and leave.
In one way it is actually lucky that Alfred respects causes so firmly because Bruce, for once, does not even think about how much Alfred knows. How much damage Alfred could do if he wanted to expose Batman’s secret.
Bruce was instead thinking about how he might lose his children over this, as he thought he knew who they would choose if between him and Alfred. To his surprise, all of them, even Jason, came down on Bruce’s side of things. Especially after watching the video of Alfred describing the training, Bruce’s refusal, and the ensuing discussion.
Alfred, for his part, simply shrugs and packs his things (including the artifact that started this entire thing, now a moot point since the plan it was for had changed). Then he went back to Ras. The next time the Batfam sees Alfred, he is several decades younger and at Ras’ side. Much therapy is needed, and had, by all.
