A/N: Did I have to go through and read the Pennyworth wiki for Martha to write this because I haven't seen the show and my knowledge comes entirely from beautiful gif sets made by lovely people? Most definitely. Hopefully it doesn't show. (And if it does, just play along and accept that this is canon for Gotham!Martha. Please.)

History: Endlessly Repeating

One thing that Alfred Pennyworth has learned during his undisclosed number of years on this Earth is that some turns of phrase are far more accurate and truthful than others. Perhaps the one that holds the most validity in his mind is "history always repeats itself." When he was still young and living in England prior to his time in the military he used to find the phrase obnoxious because surely history wouldn't actually repeat itself. But then two things happened:

The first: he saw men, some good, some evil, and some simply too young for their morality to even matter, be murdered in front of him over and over and over again. Eventually he determined that history had to repeat itself because there was no way that each day he witnessed such misery was a new horror and not just a nightmare that had somehow gotten stuck in a loop.

The second happened decades later and featured slightly less bloodshed. The event? He watched Bruce Wayne fall in love with Selina Kyle and it was just like watching Thomas Wayne fall for Martha Kane.

It started early on, when Master Bruce and Ms. Kyle were 13. Alfred had objected vehemently to the young girl staying at Wayne Manor (Master Bruce did not need a walking, talking reminder of his parents' deaths and Alfred did not need another teenager to try and keep track of), but had been overruled. The first couple days had been nothing short of a disaster. Ms. Kyle seemed determined to prove that 'Cat' was an appropriate nickname and walked around the manor not interacting with others and giving the overall impression that she could not be bothered with anyone else. Alfred himself didn't mind cats, but began to think that he might not like them if they could talk back to him like Ms. Kyle could. He was ready to evict her without a second thought when he stumbled upon the most peculiar thing. Or, more accurately, heard the most peculiar thing.

Master Bruce was… laughing. His young charge was honest to goodness laughing. Of course, this prompted Alfred to poke his head into the study where Master Bruce had been sitting, only to find breakfast food being lobbed every which way by both Master Bruce and Ms. Kyle. Under normal circumstances, Alfred would have instantly punished both and made them clean the whole room, but it had been months since Master Bruce had laughed and Alfred suddenly realized that he probably would have walked over hot coals if it meant that the last Wayne would laugh for 30 seconds. That fact alone would have granted the two children immunity for their food fight, but then Bruce turned his head so Alfred could see his profile and it was like all the air had been sucked out of the older man's lungs because for a moment he could have sworn that a young Thomas Wayne was the one throwing a croissant across the study and not his much younger son. As much as Alfred knew that Master Bruce would never be Thomas, he couldn't help but smile wryly because having a food fight in lieu of actually eating their breakfast would have been very characteristic of the Wayne couple.

Thomas would have always been far too serious and self-respecting to engage in such childish fun, but then he met Martha Kane and slowly but surely she seemed to fill him with a pure joie de vivre rarely seen outside of a kindergartner's birthday party. While Alfred could not remember the older Waynes ever engaging in a food fight, he had seen Martha play countless harmless pranks on her husband. (Her favorite was always to spray Thomas with the gardening hose, a simple trick Alfred so closely associated with her that he cried the first time he had to use the hose after her death.) Martha's ability to make Thomas laugh had always been one of Alfred's favorite things about her, even if he had found her casual attitude a bit obnoxious early on in their friendship. But that annoyance had quickly turned to a fondness before deepening into love and perhaps the same thing could happen with Ms. Kyle (though Alfred would be horrified at the very suggestion).

History was indeed repeating itself because a young brunette has just made a Wayne man laugh with such joy that Alfred couldn't help but smile himself.

Master Bruce's friendship with Ms. Kyle continued to grow as the months passed until Alfred had begun to begrudgingly accept that the young girl was likely to be at least a semi-permanent fixture in their lives. He had taken to teasing Master Bruce about developing a crush on Ms. Kyle relatively quickly after the two had become friends, but had never anticipated the two developing a friendship as deep as their quickly became.

That had been the case with Martha and Thomas as well, so Alfred likely should have seen the writing on the wall long before he did. As it was, he did not become alerted to just how close his ward and Ms. Kyle had grown until they snuck into Indian Hill together. Martha and Thomas had snuck into more places than Alfred thought he could remember, especially in the early years of their relationship. Once the two had gotten married they spent significantly more time sneaking out of galas to go home than they did sneaking into enemy territory. But, sadly, it seemed like Master Bruce had adopted the habit of getting into places he should not have been sticking his nose in much, much earlier than his parents had. (Many years in the future, Alfred was disappointed, though not surprised, to find that a long-term romance did not dissuade Bruce from sneaking around.)

As Alfred stood next to a group of GCPD cars near Indian Hill and watched the two teens talking together, Ms. Kyle perched atop a squad car with Master Bruce standing so that he had to look up at her, Alfred found himself very grateful that if Master Bruce was going to insist upon getting into trouble that he had a friend to do it with. Hopefully, some day another one of Master Bruce's peers would come along and act as a calming influence, but until then at least Ms. Kyle was good at making sure everyone survived their misadventures. Alfred was imagining what lovely young woman or man would be the one Master Bruce would be sneaking out of galas with in the future as Officer Gordon came over to say good-bye to Master Bruce so that the older man could go off to try and find Dr. Thompkins. Officer Gordon seemed to be another man whose rebellious nature had been tempered when a loving woman entered his life. Alfred was turning around to comment on that exact idea to Master Bruce when he found the young man sharing an inside joke with Ms. Kyle and the two curling into themselves as they giggled, two people in their own little world.

And here was history repeating itself again. Afterall, Thomas and Martha had been partners in crime, just as much as Master Bruce and Ms. Kyle were quickly shaping up to be.

Alfred does not know how to feel when Ms. Kyle shows up at the manor just as he had finally convinced Master B to accept that she had stood him up and that he had cooked such a lovely meal for someone who would never stick around. On the one hand, he could never wish harm on the boy who he loves so very much, but on the other, he cannot imagine a world in which Ms. Kyle will not cause that boy an undue amount of pain. That girl had not had to sit across from Master Bruce as the boy fretted and worried about her wellbeing. She had not seen how he had once cried talking about how their two lives were so different and how he'd give up anything so that she didn't have to worry about money and food and a place to lay her head. He had not seen how Master Bruce had wrung his hands as he waited for her to show up. Alfred highly doubted that she had noticed how the boy's eyes lit up whenever he saw her. How could a girl who floated through the world like it was hers know to treat Bruce Wayne like the precious soul he was?

Many years ago, in what felt like a completely different lifetime, Alfred had once had very similar thoughts about another couple. Granted, he had had a much higher opinion of Martha Kane at the time than he did of Selina Kyle, but he had worried about if Thomas was heading for heartache when his friend had started truly courting Martha. He could remember one early outing where Thomas had arranged for an elegant dinner at one of Gotham's most impressive restaurants only for Martha to show up an hour and a half late. Thinking back, Alfred cannot remember what her excuse was, but he can still remember exactly what Thomas sounded like as he called Alfred from the restaurant payphone asking what to do once Martha was an hour late. The protectiveness Alfred had felt for his friend then was nothing in comparison to how he felt about Master B now, but even then Alfred had encouraged Thomas to break the romantic relationship off. (His mother had always said Alfred did not have the patience for a romantic relationship that lasted longer than six weeks and she certainly had a least a bit of a point.) Thankfully, Thomas had not listened to Alfred that day, but the present Alfred certainly was hopeful that Master B would cut Ms. Kyle loose tonight.

Alfred did not think he could quite handle seeing a repeat of a history where a Wayne man had to put his heart into the hands of a girl who was not as careful with it as Alfred thought she should be.

Sometimes history repeats itself in a way that makes Alfred want to give up. There have been countless nights since the one in the alleyway four years ago that Alfred thanked his lucky stars that he was not there to see Martha and Thomas killed. (He knows that is probably selfish and that he should wish that he and Bruce could have traded places so that the latter had not seen his parents' murders, but Alfred doubts that he could have shouldered the burden of that experience a fraction as well as Bruce has.) And, as he stands at the front desk of Gotham Hospital trying to fill out paperwork about how Selina came to be shot in the study, he wishes that death was not a part of history that could repeat. In a cruel twist of fate, Alfred had not seen this surely fatal gunshot take place either; no, that burden would once again be Bruce's alone to bear.

Alfred had already wanted to murder Valeska the second he had seen what the monster had done to Bruce earlier today, but when the only remaining Wayne walks back into the hospital waiting room, his eyes empty of hope and tears leaving tracks along his face, Alfred thinks that he would happily kill Valeska at least once for every tear Bruce has cried and still feel that justice had not been done. Alfred takes the clipboard of paperwork to go and sit next to his charge in the waiting room. He knows that no amount of words he could ever say will help Bruce to feel better, so Alfred simply wraps his arm around Bruce's shoulders and pulls the boy into a hug, just like he had in a dirty alleyway after the Wayne's were killed. The two hug for a few minutes before Alfred pulls out a handkerchief and reminds Bruce, just like he did then, to dry his eyes because people will be watching. The advice seems just as pointless now as it did before, but Alfred believes grief should be allowed to be private, so Bruce must appear composed until he can grieve in private.

Of all the ways history could have repeated itself, this is Alfred's least favorite one yet.

Thomas looked at Martha exactly like that, Alfred catches himself thinking one day. It's the middle of summer and Gotham has been separated from the mainland for about four months. Alfred is trying his hardest to make something edible out of the small rations he has been given while Bruce and Selina are sitting on the ground in the living room of the small apartment Alfred had claimed for himself and Bruce early on. He thinks they are trying to play Monopoly, but they seem to be struggling on account of at least half of the necessary cards being absent from the box. While Ms. Kyle seems frustrated by the missing cards, Bruce seems entirely content to simply spend the evening watching her as she tries to come up with a way for them to still play. His eyes are so soft and hopeful that it hurts Alfred's heart. Alfred had once believed that Bruce would never get to experience that whole-hearted love that his parents had had, but it has continuously appeared that, for better or for worse, Bruce has found that love in Selina Kyle.

The two are almost painfully similar to Thomas and Martha in some ways. Bruce is as committed to justice as his father. Selina's mischievous streak makes Alfred believe she and Martha would have been great friends and a force to be reckoned with. Bruce's eyes and jaw could have only come from his father. Selina possesses a constantly simmering anger just beneath her surface that Alfred has only seen in Martha. Bruce and Selina find themselves in trouble just as often as they find themselves breathing; Thomas and Martha were only slightly better. Martha and Thomas loved each other more than anything else and Alfred hasn't heard Bruce or Selina say so, but he firmly believes the younger two feel similarly.

Sometimes history repeats itself in bold ways. But more often than not, it repeats itself in the small moments. Moments like this one, where Bruce Wayne looks at Selina Kyle with all the love that Thomas Wayne looked at Martha Kane with.

It seems fitting that countless moments of repeated history should inevitably deliver Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle to the same destination as it had delivered the former's parents. Some of the parallels between this Wayne wedding and the one decades ago are purposeful, but many are not and Alfred smiles to himself because, in a slightly cruel twist of fate, he is the only person who has had the honor of attending both ceremonies. (Perhaps, he thinks, the fact that he gets to see both Thomas and Bruce Wayne fall in love with women who make them better men is a gift from the universe and not the curse he had once felt it was.)

Selina, who took to wedding planning significantly more than anyone had anticipated, has done her best to duplicate Martha's wedding bouquet and chose her wedding dress around how it would look with Martha's pearls. The young woman had poured over old wedding photos and bent over backwards trying to find small ways to help Bruce feel his parents' presence at his wedding. When Alfred had asked Selina why she was working so hard to include Martha and Thomas in the wedding, she had explained that this was the best wedding gift she could think of to give Bruce, a sentiment so beautiful that Alfred had had to excuse himself to cry for a moment. It was just like both Selina and Martha to work to find small ways to display their love for their significant others and it was a characteristic that made Alfred love Selina more than he already did.

The wedding ceremony is short and sweet and absolutely perfect for the couple that has already vowed to spend eternity together over and over in every possible way. Alfred had had a similar thought when Martha and Thomas had been married. The couple is exiting the chapel, grinning bigger than they ever have before and reminding Alfred of the joy he felt at Thomas and Martha's wedding, when it happens.

History repeats itself one final time as two of Jeremiah Valeska's henchmen shoot Selina Kyle and Bruce Wayne, targeting and killing both Batman and Catwoman. Alfred's world ends for the second time as Martha Wayne's pearls once again fall to the pavement. History, it seems, is endlessly repeating.

A/N: That ending was not what I was originally planning when I sat down to write this (I was going to let it end happily), but the idea came to me and I couldn't write anything else. I'm really sorry, folks.