Batman stood at the edge of the shadows, the white lenses of his mask fixed intently on Leon.
He did not move.
He did not leave, nor did he approach.
He simply stared.
A chill crawled down Leon’s spine beneath that emotionless gaze.
During the half month he had spent in Gotham, he had seen many kinds of eyes—greed from street thugs, rage from Scarface, and the calculating look of the landlady evaluating her “merchandise.”
But Batman’s gaze was different.
It was not the gaze of someone looking at a person.
It was the gaze of someone analyzing data.
Like a machine scanning, dismantling, and reducing him from a human being into a collection of variables and parameters.
It felt as though neither of them were human.
Which was particularly terrifying for a spider.
Honestly, bats were supposed to be pretty cute creatures.
“Why do you want to be a vigilante?”
Batman finally spoke.
His voice was low, like sandpaper grinding across metal.
It was not a question.
It was an interrogation.
Not concern.
An examination.
Leon froze.
“Huh?”
“You possess strength far beyond that of an ordinary person.”
Batman spoke slowly.
Every word seemed filtered before being allowed to leave his mouth, and paired with that deep voice, each sentence carried an overwhelming pressure.
“At the docks, you lifted an overturned sedan with your bare hands. In combat, you precisely regulate your output, never causing lethal damage. You are starving, yet you have never used your strength to rob anyone. You have not even used your strength to threaten anyone for food.”
He paused.
“This is not normal.”
Leon opened his mouth.
He wanted to say, “Thanks for the compliment.”
He wanted to say, “I’m touched that you’ve been paying so much attention to me.”
He even wanted to ask, “Do you secretly have a crush on me?”
But after seeing those white lenses staring at him, he swallowed all of those words back down.
“There are only three possibilities for a person who possesses power yet refuses to use it.”
Batman’s voice remained completely emotionless.
“First, he fears something. He fears losing control of his power, being consumed by something greater, or being unable to deal with the consequences once exposed.”
“Second, he is waiting for something. Waiting for an opportunity. Waiting for prey worthy of his power. Waiting for a target worth discarding the disguise for.”
“Third.”
Batman paused again.
“He is playing a role. Playing a character he does not truly possess. Using restraint to perform kindness. Using hunger to perform harmlessness. Using constant chatter to perform innocence.”
He stepped half a pace forward.
The pressure intensified instantly, as though the shadows themselves had shifted closer.
“Which one are you?”
Leon stood there silently.
The blood on his shoulder had begun drying against the torn fabric, sticking the suit to his skin.
He should perform.
That was his instinct now.
Everything Gotham had taught him over the past half month boiled down to one rule:
Smile brightly.
Say righteous things.
Package suspicion as innocence.
Disguise calculation as instinct.
He knew exactly how to do it.
But this time—
He didn’t.
“Alright, alright. Since you asked so sincerely, I’ll tell you.”
Leon’s voice suddenly became quiet.
No rambling.
No jokes.
No endlessly talking Spider-Man performing every second of every day.
“I didn’t grow up in a place like this.”
Batman remained silent.
“The place where I grew up also had criminals. It also had violence. It also had nights where you walked down the street constantly checking whether someone was following you.”
Leon lowered his head and looked at his hands.
The same hands that could lift a sedan.
“But over there, someone taught me that power isn’t meant for taking.”
“It’s meant for protecting.”
“With great power comes great responsibility.”
Leon fell silent for a moment.
“I don’t know whether I’m acting. Maybe I am. Maybe I’ve been acting this whole time. Maybe your third possibility is actually the correct answer.”
He raised his head and looked directly at Batman.
“But if someone acts for an entire lifetime… acts until death… acts until even they can no longer tell the difference… then what exactly separates that from the real thing?”
Batman did not answer.
He stared at Leon for a very long time.
Long enough that the only sounds left inside the warehouse were distant sirens fading into the night and blood dripping quietly onto concrete.
“That place you described,” Batman finally said, “does not exist.”
“Gotham would not produce someone like you. No city would produce someone like you.”
“Your behavioral patterns are statistical anomalies. Your moral coordinate system has no matching model in criminal psychology.”
“You are not a normal person.”
Batman turned away, his cape brushing against the edge of the night wind.
“I will uncover the truth.”
He walked toward the shadows with mechanical precision, every movement stripped of anything unnecessary.
“Wait.”
Leon called out to him.
Batman stopped.
He did not turn around.
“Why do you want to be a vigilante?”
Leon deliberately lowered his voice, trying to imitate Batman’s deep, adult tone.
It genuinely wasn’t mockery.
Really.
He was serious.
Well…
sort of like two psychiatric patients exchanging medical records.
Batman did not answer.
He stood there for a second.
Maybe three.
Then he raised his arm and fired the grappling gun.
The sound of the cable retracting sliced through the night sky.
Like a shadow swallowed by greater darkness, Batman disappeared.
Leon remained standing there, staring at the empty edge of the shadows.
That black silhouette still burned against his retinas even though the man himself was already gone.
Like a drop of ink dissolving into another drop of ink.
Leon had a feeling he would see him again.
Don’t ask why.
If you absolutely needed an explanation, then call it Peter’s tingle.
“Hey.”
Leon suddenly spoke.
Not far away, a young police officer awkwardly poked half his head out from behind a shipping container, clutching a notebook while looking like a stray cat caught in headlights.
“How long were you hiding there?”
The young officer coughed awkwardly.
“Not long. Just since the ‘Why do you want to be a vigilante?’ part.”
He paused.
“Actually, I came here to secure the scene, but you two started discussing philosophy so seriously that I didn’t really have the courage to interrupt. I mean… seeing a guy dressed as a bat and another guy in pajamas debating the meaning of life at the docks isn’t exactly an everyday experience.”
Leon didn’t respond.
He sat against the wall and started tearing away the shredded fabric around his shoulder.
The cloth had dried against the wound, and pulling it away tore loose a thin layer of scab along with it.
He sucked in a sharp breath but stubbornly refused to curse.
There was another person present.
He couldn’t ruin the Friendly Neighborhood image.
The young officer walked over and handed him a roll of dirty bandages along with a bottle of unlabeled medicine.
“This is all I’ve got. Make do with it.”
Leon uncapped the bottle and sniffed it.
The alcohol smell was so strong it resembled industrial cleaning fluid.
“Is this stuff actually for humans? Why does it smell like shoe polish? Do vigilantes seriously not qualify for health insurance? I patrol the streets and stop crime very responsibly every day, you know.”
“You’re lucky you even got that,” the officer replied.
“Besides, I’m a full-time cop and I don’t have health insurance either, so why would a freelance vigilante get any?”
The officer squatted nearby while watching Leon pour the medicine over the wound.
The pain made Leon’s entire body tense like a drawn bowstring, his teeth grinding together hard enough to crack, but he still refused to make a sound.
He wrapped the bandages with disturbingly practiced movements.
The young officer silently watched the way he tied them.
“Hey,” Leon asked while tightening the knot, “if there’s no health insurance, no bulletproof vest, and nobody cares whether you live or die, then why become a cop?”
The officer fell silent for a moment.
He looked down at his faded uniform.
One cuff button was missing, replaced with a staple.
“Maybe because I still haven’t learned how to live like a dog yet.”
He stood up and brushed the dust from his knees.
“You should leave soon. The backup units arriving later won’t be as easy to talk to as I am.”
Far away, atop Gotham Bridge, a black silhouette crouched motionlessly.
The cape whipped violently in the wind like a war flag.
Batman had not returned to the Batcave.
Instead, he remained perched at the highest point in Gotham while the playback inside his tactical lenses froze on the frame where the boy said:
“With great power comes great responsibility.”
Batman replayed the scene over and over.
Pupil dilation.
Vocal frequency.
Micro-expressions.
Every single data point led to the same conclusion.
He had not lied.
He genuinely believed those words.
He had made them the core principle of his life.
Batman shut off the playback.
Gotham could not produce someone like this.
No city could.
There was no matching model in his database.
He needed more data.
Batman slowly stood up, his cape unfurling behind him.
Above Gotham, gray clouds hung oppressively low, like a filthy rag that could never truly be wrung dry.