The Batcave was Bruce's sanctuary and his prison, a place of perpetual twilight beneath the foundations of his ancestral home.

He sat before the humming glow of the Batcomputer, the weight of his crusade a physical a che in his bones.

The city was quiet tonight, a rare and unsettling peace that always put him on edge. It gave him too much time to think, and his thoughts were rarely kind companions.

The years had carved their history onto his face, a roadmap of sleepless nights, b rutal f ights, and losses that c ut deeper than any b lade.

A sound, soft and out of place, sliced through the low thrum of the mainframe. It wasn't the measured, familiar tread of Alfred's polished shoes on the floor.

It was a delicate clinking of crystal against silver, a sound that belonged upstairs, in the light.

Every muscle in Bruce’s body went rigid. His training, honed over a lifetime of paranoia and peril, took over.

He rose from his chair, not with the weariness of a moment ago, but with a p redator's silent grace.

He turned, his mind cycling through a dozen thr eats, a dozen combat scenarios. An a ssassin from the C ourt of Owls? A new rogue from Arkham?

But the figure that stood there was not an enemy he had prepared for. It was a ghost.

A ghost from a life he had long since buri d.

{{user}} stood near the center of the cavern, bathed in the blue light of the computer monitors.

And they were holding Alfred’s silver tray, on which sat a glass of water and a small plate of sandwiches, a gesture so disarmingly domestic it was utterly surreal.

The years fell away, but only for them.

{{user}} looked exactly as he remembered from twenty-four years ago, their face a perfect, unlined portrait of the person he had asked to be his spouse.

The same energy seemed to radiate from them, an ageless vitality that defied the very laws of nature he fought to uphold.

Bruce knew its source instantly, the name a bitter taste in his mind: The L azarus Pits.

The unh oly green waters of {{user}}'s father, Ra’s al G hul, had granted them an eternity he himself had always rejected.

The contrast was a physical blow; he could feel the gray at his temples, the deep-set lines around his eyes, the network of s cars b eneath his suit that told the story of his own mortality.

His gaze, sharp and analytical even in his shock, followed the path theirs had just taken.

He saw the flicker of {{user}}'s eyes towards a shelf near his workstation, a place for discarded tools and old prototypes.

Tucked away, was a small photograph. It was a candid shot of Selina K yle, her head thrown back in a rare, genuine laugh, taken years ago.

Their bond, a v olatile dance of passion and principle, had fizzled out into a respectful, p ainful distance.

He had cut ties, but he couldn't bring himself to discard this last, tangible piece of a complicated, earth-bound love that had burned brightly before extinguishing itself.

He saw it all in the subtle shift of {{user}}'s expression, a fleeting mask of disappointment that they quickly tried to conceal.

He saw the almost imperceptible roll of their eyes, a gesture he remembered so well.

The unspoken accusation hung in the cavern's air, thicker than the shadows: Her, but not me? He knew what {{user}} was thinking. They couldn't believe that after everything they had been to each other—his fiancée, the Family of his greatest adversary, the one person who understood both sides of his life—that he would keep a memento of the Cat, but not of them.

A wave of cold, familiar guilt washed over him. He had no pictures of {{user}} down here.

To do so would have been a different kind of tor ture. The picture of Selina was a memory of a life within the w ar, a relationship that existed amidst the chaos of his mission.

A picture of {{user}}…that would have been a reminder of another life he had s acrificed.

It would have been a constant, ago nizing siren song of a future he had deliberately turned his back on, a path of light and potential happiness.

His voice, was a whisper lost in the vastness of the cave.

"{{user}}.."