DC – I am Batman

Alfred had been polishing the same section of banister for twenty minutes.

He was at the top of the foyer stairs with a cloth and a tin of wax and the wood under his hands was gleaming and had been gleaming for at least ten minutes and he kept going. His back was straight. His movements were precise. The smell of lemon wax was strong enough that Thomas had walked through twice and sneezed both times and the second time he'd looked at Alfred and looked at the banister and looked at his son and shaken his head and gone back to the study.

"Alfred."

"Sir."

"The banister is fine."

"The banister will be fine when I've finished with it, Master Bruce."

"You finished with it before lunch."

Alfred stopped. He looked at the cloth. Then the banister. Then the driveway through the window.

"She said three o'clock. It is two forty-seven."

Martha came through the hallway with a vase of flowers she'd cut from the garden. She set them on the side table in the foyer, adjusted one stem, and looked up at Alfred on the stairs.

"Alfred, is that the same banister?"

"It is a banister that requires attention, Mrs. Wayne."

"It's the shiniest banister in Gotham." She adjusted the flowers again. "She'll be fine."

Alfred didn't answer. He polished.

The rental car was dark blue, compact, practical. It pulled into the driveway at two fifty-one and the engine cut and Julia Pennyworth got out with one bag and the posture of a woman who'd spent the flight sitting straight and intended to keep going.

Alfred's hand moved to his cuff. Adjusted it. It didn't need adjusting. He adjusted the other one.

He went to the front door. Alfred was already there. The cloth and the wax tin had vanished, his jacket was buttoned, his cuffs were straight, and he was standing in the foyer looking like a man who'd been standing in that foyer since the house was built.

Julia came through the door.

She was wearing field boots and a dark jacket, her hair pulled back, her face thinner than the photograph from the embassy letters. The photograph had been a cocktail dress and soft lighting and a professional smile. The woman in the doorway was the other version, the field version, and her grey-green eyes went to her father first, then to him, then to the room behind them. Checking sightlines, exits, windows. He watched her do it and remembered the flat in Paris where she'd done the same thing before she sat down.

"Father."

"Julia." Alfred's voice was level. "Welcome."

They stood in the foyer. About four feet apart.

She turned to him.

"Bruce."

She put out her hand. He took it. Her grip was firm and dry. Calluses on her palm from ropes and firearms, and the scar under the watch band pressed against his thumb. Her hand was warm. The handshake held.

Five seconds.

Alfred cleared his throat.

Julia dropped his hand. Her chin came up and she looked at her father and he looked back.

"Your room is prepared," Alfred said. "Second floor, east wing. The blue room."

"Thank you, Alfred." She picked up her bag. One bag. A week's worth of Julia Pennyworth fit in a single duffel.

Thomas was delighted. He was at his best with new audiences and Julia was a new audience and he deployed the Wayne charm with total commitment. He asked about the SRR. Julia gave him the press release version. He asked about London. She gave him London in broad strokes. He asked about Alfred's cooking.

Julia looked at her father at the end of the table. "I wouldn't know."

The table went quiet. Alfred's hands were still on the serving spoon. Thomas looked at Martha. Martha looked at her salad.

"Julia grew up in boarding school," Alfred said. His voice was the same. His hands were the same. "My professional obligations precluded a conventional domestic arrangement."

"Your professional obligations," Julia said.

"Yes."

"Right."

Martha filled the silence. She asked about the flight, the rental car, the blue room's blankets, whether Julia preferred coffee or tea. The questions were warm and practical and underneath them Martha was watching Julia with the steady attention Martha gave to everyone who sat at her table for the first time.

Alfred served. Roast lamb, potatoes, green beans. He served Julia's plate last. The portion was larger than everyone else's.

"Julia, Thomas tells me you're in intelligence," Martha said.

"Yes, ma'am."

"That must be fascinating. And lonely."

Julia's fork paused. Her eyes met Martha's.

"It has its moments," Julia said.

Martha nodded. She didn't push.

Thomas rescued the table. He talked about the clinic, the zoning board, a council member named Gerald Finch who'd fallen asleep during a budget hearing and snored through an East End sewer maintenance discussion loudly enough to be broadcast on C-SPAN. Two hundred viewers. Martha laughed. Julia laughed. Alfred's mouth moved a fraction.

"Your son speaks very highly of you," Julia said to Thomas. The table shifted. She'd said it looking at Thomas but the statement included everyone at the table and the everyone included Alfred.

"Bruce is generous," Thomas said.

"Bruce is accurate," Julia said. She looked at her lamb.

Thomas talked with his surgeon's hands. Martha ate with her eyes on everyone. Alfred sat at the end, straight-backed, refilling water, and when Martha told him to sit he sat next to Julia and the chair was close.

A moth was batting against the dining room window. Nobody else noticed it.

The terrace was cold.

They went out after dinner while Thomas and Martha washed dishes together in a kitchen that had a dishwasher they didn't use. Alfred had retired to his quarters with a stiffness that was either his back or his daughter being in the same house as the young man whose hand she'd held for five seconds and was probably both.

Julia was on the stone bench near the garden wall. She'd changed. Jeans, a dark green sweater, sleeves pushed to her elbows. Her hair was down. He'd never seen it down. Darker than he'd thought, past her shoulders. It changed her face. The angles went softer.

She was holding tea Alfred had made before he disappeared. The tea was cooling. A cat was sitting on the garden wall watching them with the entitlement of an animal that owned the property and tolerated the tenants.

"You look like you could break someone in half," she said.

"You look like you forgot to bring a weapon."

She laughed. Short, surprised. It used her whole face.

"I have three. You just can't see them."

The jeans were loose at the ankle. The right sleeve of the sweater sat differently over the forearm. The hair clip had a weight to it.

"Ankle. Forearm. Clip."

Her eyebrows went up. "The clip's ceramic. X-ray invisible."

"SRR issue?"

"SRR issue." She sipped the cold tea and drank it anyway. "You're observant."

"You're armed on a terrace."

"I'm armed everywhere. You should see me at the beach."

The night was clear and cold and the stars were visible because the Manor was far enough from Gotham for the sky to work. The cat on the wall yawned. An airplane crossed above them with its lights blinking.

"Your mother's good," Julia said.

"Good how?"

"Good at the thing where she asks a simple question and three layers fall out of the answer. 'That must be fascinating. And lonely.' That's a diagnosis, not a question."

"Martha reads people."

"Martha read me in about forty seconds and she was right and I didn't enjoy it." She turned the cup in her hands. "Your father's easier. He talks and he means what he says. Martha's watching the mechanism in everyone else."

"She's been watching mine for twenty years."

"How's that going?"

"She knows I'm hiding things. She doesn't know what."

He laughed. Short. She looked at him with her eyebrows slightly raised.

"The cat," she said. "Is it yours?"

"It lives here. We feed it. I don't think it considers the arrangement formal."

"It was staring at me."

"It stares at everyone. Thomas thinks it's feral. Martha thinks it's a stray she domesticated. Alfred thinks it's a tactical asset that patrols the grounds."

"And you?"

"I think it's a cat."

She smiled. Just the eyes.

"How's your father?" he asked.

"He's Alfred."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one I have." She looked at her tea. "He polishes things when he's nervous. I noticed the banister."

"He's been at it since lunch."

"That bad."

"He made your plate the biggest."

Her mouth pulled sideways. Then she looked at the garden.

"He does that." She was quiet for a few seconds. "The letters helped. His and yours. He wrote me every week for four years. Same stationery, same penmanship. Conditions at the manor, weather, household updates. Every letter the same length." She drank the cold tea. "I'd read them looking for the sentence where he said he missed me and it was always there, buried in the middle, disguised as a comment about the garden or Mrs. Brennan's scones."

He didn't say anything.

"He's terrible at this," she said. "And so am I."

The wind came through and she shivered. A small thing, her shoulders pulling in, her hands tightening on the cup.

He took off his jacket and put it around her shoulders. His hand settled on her collarbone as he pulled the collar up. Her skin was warm under his palm. Smooth. The bones of her clavicle close under the skin. His hand stayed.

Her breathing caught. A small break in the rhythm, then resetting at a different speed. Her chin dropped a fraction and her eyes went to his hand on her shoulder and then up to his face.

He pulled back.

She let him.

The terrace was quiet. Thomas and Martha's voices through the kitchen window, faint, and the sound of water running and dishes. His jacket was too big on her and the collar was turned up and her hair was dark against the dark wool.

"Three months is a long time to wait for leave," he said.

"It is."

"Was it worth it?"

She looked at him. Grey-green in the dark. His jacket on her shoulders. Her hair down.

"Ask me at the end of the week."