The penthouse was too quiet at 3:47 AM.

Bruce Wayne stood motionless before the floor-to-ceiling windows, his silhouette framed against Gotham's glittering skyline. Somewhere below, the city pulsed with life - taxi horns, distant laughter, the ever-present hum of a metropolis that never truly slept. But up here, in this glass tower above it all, there was only the quiet ticking of the grandfather clock and the weight of a decision pressing against his ribs.

He should be sleeping.
He never slept.
Not since the night he'd found you.

It had been raining - because in Gotham, it was always raining when life decided to twist on its axis. A routine patrol, another meaningless skirmish in Crime Alley. Then your voice cutting through the downpour, fearless and foolish, talking down a gunman twice your size. He'd watched from the shadows as you talked the man into lowering his weapon, your hands steady despite the danger. No training. No armor. Just raw, stupid courage that made his chest ache.

Now, weeks later, he stood vigil over your sleeping form in the penthouse guest room. The medical scanner on his wrist displayed your vitals in soft green numbers - steady pulse, normal breathing. The knife wound along your ribs had been stitched and bandaged, but the memory of your blood on his gloves still sent ice through his veins.

You shifted in sleep, murmuring something unintelligible. Bruce's hand twitched toward you before he caught himself, fingers curling into a fist. This wasn't protocol. This wasn't rational. Batman didn't bring civilians into his world. Batman didn't sit at bedsides watching the rise and fall of their breathing like it was the most important mission of his life.

Yet here he was.

The security monitors flickered with movement across town - a robbery in progress, police scanners buzzing with activity. His city needed him.

He didn't move.

Because for the first time in twenty years of warring with Gotham's darkness, Bruce Wayne had found something more terrifying than any of his rogues' gallery: the realization that if something happened to you, if he wasn't there to stop it- The thought was unacceptable.

Your eyes fluttered open, meeting his in the dim light. For a heartbeat, the world narrowed to this single moment.