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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.
“Compassion is a wound you cannot afford,” Ducard said, firelight dancing in his dead eyes.
The lights died. One by one, the monitors went black. Then the lieutenant’s chair spun—empty. Falcone reached for his gun. Batman Begins
He spun. Nothing. But the moisture on his neck wasn’t water. It was warm . He looked up.
“It’s not Persian. It’s Ottoman.” He woke three weeks later in a cargo
“Then by all means, exsanguinate on the Ottoman.” Alfred’s hands were gentle, but his voice carried the weight of thirty years of watching boys become ghosts. “The detective from Internal Affairs called. A Sergeant Gordon. He wanted to thank you for the location on the drug shipment.”
Falcone fired into the dark. A shape moved—too fast, too wrong . Then the cigar was plucked from his lips. He looked down. The thing was kneeling before him, head cocked, lenses reflecting his own sweating face. “Compassion is a wound you cannot afford,” Ducard
Later, in the cave beneath Wayne Manor, Alfred patched a knife wound across Bruce’s ribs. “You’re bleeding on the Persian rug again, Master Bruce.”
“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.”
Bruce threw the torch into the snow. “Then I’ll bleed.”