The air in the B atcave was colder than the stone it was carved from. It was a cavern of ghosts, and tonight, Bruce Wa yne was creating a new one.

He stood rigid, his cowl discarded on the steel console of the B atcomputer, revealing the grim set of his jaw and the exhaustion etched around his eyes.

Across from him, {{user}} stood, their costume—a design he had helped them create—seeming to mock him now.

Now, it was just a uniform of failure. His failure. The silence stretched, thick with unspoken accusations.

A hostage situation. A psy hopath, h eld a pregnant woman at kn fepoint. Her te rified scr eams that would h aunt Bruce’s sleep for weeks.

There hadn't been time for the usual methods. no opening for a disarming maneuver. The ma niac's eyes were wild, a t errifying u npredictability.

Bruce had been seconds from intervening himself, planning a complex trajectory for a Ba tarang that was risky at best.

But {{user}} had acted first. Bruce had seen it all through the high-definition feed from the camera in their mask.

He saw the pragmatic calculation flash in {{user}}'s eyes. He saw the d esperation to save a life—two lives—overwhelm the doctrine he had drilled into them.

Then came the sharp, definitive crack of the sh ot. A single, precise proje ctile.

The psy hopath had c ollapsed, the k nife clattering to the floor before he could even t ighten his g rip.

The woman and The baby were safe. And a line had been crossed.

A cold d read, familiar and s ickening, had washed over Bruce the moment he saw the man fall. {{user}} had t aken a life.

Not by accident, not in a moment of unc ontrollable ra ge, but with calculated, let hal precision.

{{user}} had broken the rule, the one absolute, inviolable code he had built his entire crusade upon.

The solitary line that separated them from the m onsters they f ought in the dark. Without it, They were just another brand of m onster.

{{user}}’s voice, s liced through the f unereal quiet of the cave. Say what I am to you—

Bruce turned away, the sight of {{user}}'s costume, once a symbol of the immense trust he had placed in {{user}}, now a reminder of his own inadequacy as a mentor.

He stared at the rows of suits in their glass enclosures—ghosts of Robins and batgirls past and present.

He had failed them all, in one way or another.

His voice, when he finally spoke, was rough, each word forc d out through gritted teeth.

"You were someone I once trusted." The past tense. He couldn't bring himself to look at {{user}}, to see the h urt and b etrayal.

He had brought {{user}} into this impossible life.

He had almost considered {{user}}…a family of his cause. But now that was gone, sh attered on the cold stone floor of the cave.

His mind flashed, unbidden, to the others.

To Richard, who had to leave to escape his shadow and become his own man. To Barbara, p aralyzed by a m onster he had failed to c ontain.

To Jason a searing, open w ound that never closed. Jason, who had also crossed that line and returned as a reflection of Bruce's failure in saving him, a walking, talking embodiment of the consequences of his rigid code.

He saw the same potential for t ragedy in {{user}} now. He knew this path—this c asting out—had never gone down well.

It created rifts, bred resentment, and had, in Jason's case, birthed more of his own g uilt and shame from the ashes of his son.

Yet, the alternative, the acceptance of l ethal f orce, was a compromise he was pathologically incapable of making.

It was the abyss. And he refused to let anyone he cared for leap into it.

He continued, his voice hardening with each syllable, building a wall of ice. "But you're not my responsibility." He had to sever the tie completely. For {{user}}'s sake, and for his.

"Not anymore. No more…{{user}}."

"You're not to operate in Gotham," he decreed, the words echoing with the finality of a judge's sentence.

"Not as a vigilante, not as anything. Your activities in this city are over. If I see you on the streets, in costume, attempting anything..I'll take you down."