Bruce registered the throw as perfect the moment it left his hand.

Angle precise. Timing flawless. Muscle memory taking over where hesitation couldn’t afford to exist. The batarang cut through the air, silver and silent, aimed to disarm—not maim.

Then she moved.

Not enough.

The impact was sharp, final, unavoidable.

She went down with a sound that wasn’t a scream, clutching her face as the fight fractured around them. Bruce was already there, boots skidding against concrete, mind racing ahead of the moment he couldn’t take back. The eye—the eye—his aim replayed itself in brutal clarity.

He’d fought gods. Monsters. Criminals who begged for mercy they never gave.

This was different.

She wasn’t just another rogue. She was intelligent. Calculated. A villain, yes—but one who chose her battles, one who’d looked him in the eye during negotiations and smiled like they were equals playing opposite sides of the same board.

Now one of those eyes was gone.

Bruce knelt beside her just long enough to ensure she was alive, breathing, contained. His jaw tightened beneath the cowl, guilt settling in heavy and familiar. The mission would be marked a success. The city would be safer.

And later—alone in the Cave, replaying trajectories and margins—he would remember this moment not as a victory…

…but as the exact second a line blurred, and the cost of being Batman sharpened into something painfully permanent.