Batman | Begins

Bruce stared at the cowl on its stand. The ears were crooked. He’d fix that tomorrow. “Did he ask for a name?”

“You are not afraid of dying,” Ducard said, sliding a bowl of rancid rice through the bars. “You are afraid of living —of the moment you must choose to act.” Batman Begins

He spun. Nothing. But the moisture on his neck wasn’t water. It was warm . He looked up. Bruce stared at the cowl on its stand

He woke three weeks later in a cargo hold, a crude bat-shaped blade buried in his shoulder—a parting gift. The League would not forgive. But Gotham was waiting, her bones picked clean by Falcone’s crows and the rot of broken banks. “Did he ask for a name

“Compassion is a wound you cannot afford,” Ducard said, firelight dancing in his dead eyes.

But on the night of his final trial—a village cowering before a false king, a cart of opium to be burned—Bruce hesitated. The king was a man. The village held children. And the League’s answer was always ash.

“You’re not a rule.” The voice came from everywhere and nowhere. “You’re a symptom.”