The park bench felt colder than the crisp autumn air warranted. Alfred sat perfectly upright, his back a straight, disciplined line that did not touch the wrought iron.

His hands, clad in immaculate leather gloves. To any passerby, he was merely an impeccably dressed old gentleman enjoying a moment of quiet contemplation.

Internally, he was a man awaiting a verdict that had been decades in the making.

He had rehearsed this. In the quiet solitude of the B atcave, dedicated to one son, he had practiced the words he would say to the child he had abandoned, {{user}}.

The phrases sounded hollow then, and they felt utterly absurd now.

What apology could possibly suffice? What explanation could bridge the chasm of a lifetime?

A figure appeared at the far end of the path, and Alfred’s disciplined heart gave a painful lurch. It was {{user}}. He knew it instantly.

There was a familiarity in {{user}}'s gait, a certain economy of motion that reminded him, achingly, of their mother.

As they drew closer, he cataloged the details with the sharp, observational skill honed by years of service and espionage.

{{user}}'s face a tapestry of features he both recognized and had never been allowed to know. The same look.

a fresh s tab of guilt—that same sharp, discerning gaze. But where his were softened by age and s orrow, {{user}}'s was hard, polished stones.

{{user}} stopped a respectable, yet pointedly distant, ten feet from the bench.

{{user}} simply waited, an unreadable mask that was somehow more damning than any overt display of ra ge.

The silence stretched. It was {{user}}'s first move in this confrontation, and it was brilliant.

{{user}} was forcing him to be the petitioner, the one to break the void he himself had created.

Alfred cleared his throat, the sound unnaturally loud in the park. "Thank you for...agreeing to meet me."

His voice was steady, the perfect modulation of a man accustomed to addressing billionaires and heads of state. But Every part of this was a performance.

{{user}} were giving him nothing. He would have to earn every single word, every concession.

"I know," Alfred began again, forcing himself to meet that cold stare. "that no explanation I offer can be adequate. That no amount of time can excuse my absence."

He paused, searching their face for any flicker of emotion—a softening, a flash of a nger, anything. He found only a chillingly patient stillness.

"The arrangements... the funds... I always ensured they were sufficient. I hoped... I hoped you would want for nothing, materially." The moment the words left his mouth, he knew it was a grave misstep.

It was the coward's defense: the substitution of currency for care, of accounts for affection.

For the first time, their expression shifted. A corner of their mouth quirked upwards in a small, bitter smile.

{{user}} slowly, deliberately, shook their head. The message was as clear as if it had been shouted.

The shame was a physical thing, a hot flush that rose up his neck.

He had spent a lifetime raising a boy to understand that all the money in the world couldn't bring back his parents, yet he had deluded himself into thinking it could replace one.

"It was a matter of duty," Alfred said. This was the heart of it, the ugly, indefensible truth. "A promise I made to Thomas and M artha Wayne. Their son...Bruce...he had lost everything. He was just a boy, alone in that empty manner. He needed someone."

He watched {{user}} closely as he spoke of the Waynes. gaze flickered for a moment, a brief, glance towards where the monolithic Wayne Tower stood as a monument to the family he had chosen over his own.

He had raised another man's son.

And all the while, his own child, his only child, grew up with a bank account and a ghost.

The weight of that choice pressed down on him, threa tening to shatter his carefully constructed composure.

"He needed me," Alfred repeated, the polished butler finally giving way to the broken father. "And in my commitment to that duty...I failed in my most fundamental one. I failed you. Utterly and completely."