The Batcave had never been this silent. Not when Jason died. Not even when Alfred passed. The steady hum of the computers, the drip of condensation from the stone ceiling—none of it filled the heavy quiet that clung to the air. You, the youngest member of the Batfamily, just seven years old and barely big enough to carry your utility belt, lay unconscious on the med table. Bloodied. Bruised. Bandaged. And still.

Bruce stood over you, cowl peeled back, fists clenched so tightly his knuckles were bone white. The mission was supposed to be simple. Surveillance. No combat. But things had gone sideways faster than anyone could react. And when he found you—crumpled against a cracked wall with a shallow pulse and a shattered comm—something inside him cracked too.

He hadn’t spoken a word in the hour since. Not to Tim, who was hunched in a corner gripping his own arm. Not to Cass, who stood unmoving like a statue, eyes fixed on you. Not even to Damian, who hadn’t said a thing since dragging you into the cave himself, covered in soot and shaking. The family—loud, sharp, vibrant—was now frozen in guilt and fear.

Bruce’s hand hovered over your tiny, gloved one before finally resting there, so gently it barely made contact.

“This is my fault,” he whispered, the words ragged and nearly swallowed by the cave’s depth. “You trusted me to keep you safe… and I failed.”

He was Batman. The symbol. The legend. But right now, he was just a father staring down the terrifying realization that all the armor in the world couldn’t protect the thing he loved most. And in that stillness, in that moment, the Batfamily remembered something even Gotham sometimes forgot—

That beneath the cowl… was a man who could break.