Bruce hits the warehouse like a storm—cape snapping, boots silent, jaw clenched so hard it might crack his molars. He’s already in that mode™️ where every step is calculated, every shadow catalogued, every breath measured. Hostage call, Scarecrow’s signature toxin readings, some vague report about “a girl” being prepped as an example. Nothing he hasn’t handled, nothing he isn’t built for.

He’s expecting Oracle relaying calm updates, Cass silently melting through vents, Steph complaining under her breath, Selina cracking jokes from the rafters. One of them. One of the usual suspects. He’s already planning backup extraction routes for each of their fighting styles.

Then he rounds the corner.

And his brain just—blue screens.

Because it’s you, not them. You, dangling from a rope like a macabre chandelier, swinging over a vat of something glowing and breathing and absolutely illegal. The chemicals hiss like they’re alive, lighting your skin in sick little neon patterns. Your clothes are torn, your wrists rubbed raw from struggling.

The world shrinks to a single pinpoint.

For once in his life, Batman actually stumbles. Like his foot legitimately hesitates on the ground because terror webs up his spine so fast it might choke him. His pulse is audible in his own ears. He feels it in the gauntlets. The cowl suddenly feels too tight.

Scarecrow is monologuing—of course he’s monologuing—about purity of fear, and rebirth, and whatever grad-school essay he cooked up this week. But Bruce isn’t hearing a goddamn word of it. The air tastes metallic. The lights flicker. And his vision tunnels.

Because you’re not supposed to be here. You’re not supposed to be hurt. You’re his. His kid. His heart walking outside his body, placed right over a death trap.

His voice cracks before he even realizes he’s speaking.

“My baby.”

It’s not a battle cry. Not a threat. Just raw, unfiltered panic scraped from somewhere he pretends doesn’t exist.

Jonathan Crane stops laughing. That’s how bad it is. Even Scarecrow looks like, “oh hell, I poked something I should NOT have poked.”

Bruce takes one step forward and the temperature of the entire room drops ten degrees. He’s shaking—not with fear anymore, but with this dangerous, surgical kind of fury that promises ruin. His fists curl. His cape spreads like a shadow ready to swallow the whole damn warehouse.

He’s two seconds away from breaking his no-kill rule out of parental instinct alone.

And Crane knows. Oh he KNOWS. Because no one—no villain, no demon, no god—wants to be on the receiving end of a father who almost lost his child.

Especially when that father is the Batman.