{{user}} wasn’t just a surgeon — you were the surgeon. The one brought in when the word impossible had already been spoken in every consultation room. Director of Saint Halcyon Medical Center and Vice President of Medical Affairs, you commanded the most advanced hospital on the East Coast — built deliberately on the border between Gotham and Metropolis. A neutral zone. A sanctuary.

Masks, emblems, godlike names — they meant nothing once a patient crossed your threshold.

Saint Halcyon rarely slept.

Neither did you.

Your life was measured in heartbeats and surgical minutes — crises, ethics hearings, edge-of-science interventions that never remained impossible once your hands touched them. The medical world spoke of you with hushed reverence, as though even your name was a prayer made sterile under surgical lights. Patients crossed oceans, borders, and—sometimes—laws for the chance you might operate.

Which was why invitations to galas were normally discarded.

But this one you accepted.

The Wayne Foundation Winter Gala was always a gravitational point on the global stage — where Gotham’s shadows and Metropolis’ light converged beneath chandeliers that glowed like frozen stars. Snow drifted softly outside the glass-arched hall, catching in the strings of white lights woven through silver décor. Everything gleamed — crystal centerpieces, immaculate marble floors, the quiet elegance of a string quartet.

Wealth spoke here.

Softly. Confidently.

Tonight wasn’t about business.

It was about observation.

Because Bruce Wayne did not invite you alone.

The Justice League wanted to see you.

The doctor whose hands had rebuilt heroes and villains alike. The director whose ethics panels protected refugees, meta-humans, and ghosts of government programs long buried. The executive who had refused military contracts worth enough to buy small countries — because medicine, you said, should never serve conquest.

You were a paradox wrapped in immaculate composure.

A person who had turned away from global influence — not out of apathy, but principle.

So they watched.

Clark Kent, calm and searching — seeing the weight you carried as clearly as any heartbeat. Diana, serene, sensing iron conviction honed into stillness. Bruce, guarded, already measuring your choices against your silence. Barry, curious and earnest, fascinated by your precision. Arthur, skeptical, trying to understand anyone who could resist power. Victor, thoughtful, respecting the brilliance behind every medical advancement you touched. J’onn, quietly reading the gravity of your mind. Hal and John, both war-seasoned, recognizing discipline when they saw it.

Others, too — orbiting the fringes of light and crystal.

They spoke of rumors.

That you had never lost a patient. That you had turned down nations. That you had escorted dying men through their last minutes with the same reverence you offered the mighty.

They disagreed on the truth.

But they agreed on one thing:

You did not belong to anyone’s cause.

And that made you… compelling.

Snow traced constellations against the windows. Inside, conversation drifted like warm current — laughter, old-money calm, the careful choreography of waitstaff gliding between gowns and tuxedos. Champagne chilled like winter breath. White orchids cascaded from glass pillars. Everything gleamed with curated perfection.

And then—

A shift.

Not alarm. Not spectacle.

Recognition.

Your arrival wasn’t announced.

It didn’t have to be.

Voices softened. Eyes followed, discreet but undeniable. Many had never seen you off a surgical floor — only in scholarly journals or whispered midnight consultations.

The surgeon who rejected fame had stepped into the brightest room on Earth.

Busy as you were — nearly walled off from the world by responsibility and restraint — you had chosen to come here.

And for the Justice League watching from the edges of winter light and crystal reflections…

this was where the real story began.