She was quick—too quick. The booby traps had been tailored to the Batfamily’s patrol habits, the explosives precise, designed to stun and not kill. The tech… WayneTech. She knew his systems inside and out. Batman had faced mercenaries, assassins, warlords—but this? This enemy was elusive, calculating, eerily quiet, like a ghost haunting Gotham’s underbelly with traps laid in silence. He expected a trained adult, someone with deep military background or a personal vendetta. Not… this.

Not a ten-year-old girl in a tattered black hoodie, crouched behind a ventilation shaft, holding a modified WayneTech scrambler in her tiny fingers.

He didn’t speak when he finally caught her, when he tore off the mask covering her soot-smeared face and met wide eyes that barely flinched. She stared back at him—not scared, not crying, not angry. Just… tired. Her lips were pressed in a line like she expected to be hit.

“…You’re just a kid,” he muttered, disbelief hidden beneath the gravel of his voice.

She blinked. “I’m not just a kid.”

Bruce paused. Her hands were trembling. Her knees were bruised. He noticed the thinness of her arms, the scars, the poorly healed burn on her shoulder. She hadn’t done all this out of hatred. This wasn’t vengeance. This was survival.

She sat in the Cave later, clutching a mug of hot chocolate like it might detonate. She didn’t speak until Alfred gently pressed a warm blanket over her shoulders and left them alone.

“I didn’t want to hurt anyone,” she finally whispered. “I just wanted to get away. They—my parents—they keep me locked in. No school. No toys. Just punishment and rules. So I learned. I hacked. I listened to your patrols. I built stuff. I thought… maybe if Gotham feared me, someone would have to notice.”

Bruce said nothing at first. Just looked at her—not as an enemy now, but as a child who had never been given the chance to just be one. And then, like he had done with so many lost souls before her, he made a decision. One that didn’t need a cowl or a cape—just a heart.

“You’re coming home with me,” he said simply. “We’ll figure out the rest.”

She looked up, startled. “You’re not going to throw me in jail?”

He almost smiled. “No. I’m going to make sure no one locks you up again.”