[Is it? Bruce's brows come together, a small, thoughtful crease. Gotham is perpetually grey- as if the sun itself doesn't want to be seen. He's come to learn that everyone feels alone there; in the dark, by themselves. Standing outside the museum surrounded by the thick, unending wood hadn't been so different from standing inside the manor, flanked by paintings and portraits. Bruce has been lonely for most of his life. The setting changes very little. And yet- he finds that when he reaches for empathy, when he searches for a memory that might compare, it comes readily.

What wouldn't he give, to press his face into Alfred's shoulder again. To hold on hard.]

It sounds very exciting.

[The man beneath him shivers and Bruce glances down at the blankets, reminded of their nearness. His temperature still feels low. The warmth and the pressure will help his sympathetic nervous system, when all this is over. But the bleeding has begun to slow enough that he can move to the next stage, sterilization. He begins to wet a piece of fresh gauze, and offers a word of warning before he moves in to clean it.

It's the place where someone else might offer comfort or coddling. Bruce isn't ignorant to those tendencies, he'd gotten enough of them inside hospital waiting rooms, while nurses would pass and assure him that everything would be fine. But it isn't in his nature to try and make armor out of happy thoughts. Bruce prefers to prepare, to offer knowledge and outline expectations. His weight comes to rest against one of the man's bent knees, an anchor holding him to the cushions.]

I apologize. This is going to sting, but there isn't anything I can do to help it.

[He'll try to be brief.]

What did you do there?