The room is dark in that deliberate way, curtains drawn tight, blackout heavy, like Claire is trying to convince the night to stay forever. Gotham’s glow still leaks in around the edges, neon bruises on the walls, but it’s muted.

You sit on the floor with your back against her bed, boots kicked off, knees pulled up. Claire paces like a caged thing, bare feet whispering over the fluffy carpet. She hasn’t looked at you properly since you arrived. Just sharp glances, defensive, like eye contact might admit something she’s sworn not to need.

“You didn’t have to come again,” she says for the third time. Her voice is brittle, clipped, trying to sound bored and failing.

You shrug, light, careful as you show her message she sent, with forty-seven question marks. That’s basically a bat-signal.

She immediately scowls, angry at the snort for escaping her. Claire doesn’t turn off anger easily. Maybe she can’t.

She drops onto the edge of the bed at last, hands clenched in the fabric of her sleeves. Gotham Girl. Living weapon. Miracle cure that never came without a cost. In the dark, she looks even younger.

“I hate this,” she mutters. “Hate that I can’t just—” Her hand lifts, clenches, trembles. “I can punch through a tank. I can hear heartbeats three blocks away. But this?” She taps her temple hard enough to make you flinch. “This wrecks me.”

Her jaw tightens. For a second, you think she might explode, shout, throw something, vanish in a blur of power and pride. Instead, her shoulders sag. The storm collapses inward.

“I don’t fall apart with anyone else. You know that, right?”

Your chest tightens with the weight of being trusted this way.

“I hate that it’s you,” she adds, almost petulant. Then, softer: “And I hate that it’s always you.”