#cherry picking from canon like a feral raccoon let loose in an orchard

[thebibliosphere]

Pennyworth: The Daring Young Man

Chapter five

On the one hand, the acid-shooting flowers had done wonders for Gotham’s air quality by soaking up the harmful pollution in the atmosphere. True, they'd then turned it into a bio-weapon. But you couldn't have everything. On the other hand, it reminded him too much of Burma—the dappled sunlight tinted green by giant leaves, the humidity, and the scent of deep, dark earth tinged metallic and stained red with blood, the shouts, the screams…

Alfred shivered and shook his head to shake off the memory before it could manifest into anything else.

Now would not be a good time to hallucinate Spanish riddled with bullet holes sitting beside him in the passenger seat. Or anyone else, for that matter. He had too much going on to allow his grip on reality to wobble any more than it already had over the last few days. It was bad enough that he still felt like the world still wasn’t quite solidified yet. Like they were still missing something…

“You’re doing fine, love,” said a fond, kindly voice to his right.

“Fuck,” Alfred muttered, allowing himself a brief moment to squeeze his eyes shut, his hands tightening into a death grip on the steering wheel. “Not now, Mum.”

[Read more on Ao3]

I am posting this from my phone so I apologize if the formatting is horrendous. It’s the only screen not triggering a migraine right now. If it’s bad I’ll show @mothman-etd how to use Ao3 and he can fix it.

Anyway. Alfred is having a very normal time of it. No ghosts here.