Alfred tried to go home.

Not just to his narrow bed and the kitchen where his mum burned vegetables into a sort of culinary threat — but to the idea of it.

To the part of him that still believed home was a place outside the war.

It wasn't.

His mum opened the door before he could knock. She saw the bruises shadowing his jaw, the slump of a man holding himself together by muscle memory alone.

"Well. Someone hit you," she said.

"Other way 'round, mostly."

"You think that's better?"

He stepped inside. The air was warm with boiled vegetables, tea, and the soft buzz of a radio announcer who insisted everything was fine.

He sat at the small table. She set a mug in front of him without asking.

They let the silence breathe.

"I heard about the girl," she said at last. "Esme."

His throat tightened. "News travels."

"People talk," she said. "They said it was quick. Like that's supposed to be comforting."

He stared into the tea. Steam curled around his fingers.

"I'm sorry, Mum," he said. He hadn't expected those words to come out.

She frowned gently. "You didn't do it."

"I brought the war home with me," he said. "Dragged it through our doors and let it sit there 'til it got bored."

She sat across from him; hands folded like she was holding herself together.

"You were a boy when they put a gun in your hand," she said. "Came back a man they told to forget it all. It was just a bad dream."

He said nothing.

"I see you even when you think you're hidin'," she said. "Half of you's always listenin' for shells. Countin' heads. Clockin' exits."

He tightened his grip on the mug.

"I didn't want you to notice."

She smiled sadly. "I'm your mother. I notice even when I don't want to."

Her eyes glistened.

"This is not your fault."

"She's dead because someone wanted to hurt me," he said. "That arrow had my name on it."

"You're not that powerful," she said. "Don't give yourself that much credit. You're one man in a world full of bastards."

He almost laughed.

"I hate that you're right."

"Somebody has to be," she said. "Those fancy people you're runnin' about with — I bet they're all idiots with feelin's."

He pictured Thomas rubbing his eyes behind his glasses.

Harland drinking silence like medicine.

Martha pacing instead of sitting because stillness made her think too much.

"A bit," he admitted.

"Then you don't be an idiot," she said. "You can't fix the world. You can barely fix your trousers. But you can stand where you are and say, 'No more.' You've always been stubborn. Best you use it for somethin' that matters."

He swallowed. "There's worse comin'," he said. "Bad things."

"I know," she said. "Sky's the same color it gets before a storm."

"You're not askin' me to stay out of it."

"Would you listen if I did?"

He shook his head.

"Then what's the point?" she sighed. "Just don't come back dead. I've already buried one man this house couldn't live without. I won't do a second."

He closed his eyes.

"I'll try."

"That's all any of us ever get. The rest is luck and other people's foolishness."

When he left, the sky hovered low and heavy; clouds hunched over the rooftops like something waiting.

--

Across the city, another woman stared out a window, watching Londoners hurry along with collars up, lives squeezed small by weather and worry.

Martha felt oddly soothed by the ordinariness of it — misery without grand stakes, pain without ideology.

Thomas was behind her; phone pressed to his ear, voice taut.

"I don't care what the official line is," he snapped. "If the Home Office wants to pretend the Ravens are a fringe nuisance, that's their prerogative. But if they treat this like a talking point for one more election, there won't be a city left for anyone to govern."

He paused. Listened. Jaw tightened.

"No," he said. "I'm not asking for authorization — I'm asking for fewer damn obstacles."

He hung up and pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose.

"Let me guess," Martha said. "They want patience."

"They want the Ravens to embarrass themselves quietly," Thomas said, "so they can swoop in with a solution that polls well."

"And until then?"

"We work in the gaps," he said. "Same as always."

She turned from the window. "When this is over — if we're not dead or in jail — you're taking me somewhere that doesn't even know what the word 'coup' means."

He managed a thin smile. "Gotham?"

She grimaced. "Don't be disgusting."

He moved closer, stopped like he wasn't sure he was permitted to.

"How's Pennyworth?"

"Fragile. But standing," she said. "Grief put chains on him, but it didn't break him. Yet."

Thomas nodded. "We're asking too much of him."

"You always say that," she said. "Then hand me twice the workload and pretend you're the reasonable one."

"And you always say yes."

"Because if I don't, someone worse will. Sound familiar?"

He held her gaze a heartbeat longer than propriety allowed.

Outside, rainclouds knotted tighter.

Two mothers in one city — one with a son grown, one with a child she didn't know she was carrying — both standing before a storm neither could name yet.

London didn't care. It had seen worse.

But the timeline shifted, almost imperceptibly, like a prelude sharpening its notes.

And decades later, it would echo in an alley where pearls would fall like snow, and a frightened boy would inherit a war that began long before he was born.

For now, there were only people trying not to drown.