The night pressed down over Gotham like a living thing, rain streaking across the city in jagged silver lines. Bruce had been in the Batcave for hours, eyes scanning intel, muscles coiled with the same constant tension that never left him. Every report, every map, every flashing red blip reminded him of the one thing he couldn’t control—her.

He didn’t expect to see her in the penthouse when he returned. Not here, not now. Not when she’s been gone for days on end without so much as a check-in. She’d been doing that more and more lately. But there she was, leaning against the floor-to-ceiling window, the city lights cutting sharp streaks across her face, her posture effortless but impossible to ignore.

“You’re late,” she said, voice calm, smooth, but her eyes flicked to the tension in his jaw, to the subtle crease between his brows, and the tension in his shoulders.

Bruce’s response was clipped, controlled. “I could say the same about you. I’m surprised you’re even here.”

A beat passed. Silence thicker than the storm outside. He wanted to demand explanations, wanted to demand why she had been so distant, why she had been pulling away, why she’d disappeared for days at a time without a word. But the words got caught somewhere between control and something darker—fear, desire, the vulnerability he didn’t allow anyone to see, the raw ache in his chest he refused to name.

“Bruce…” she tried again, soft, almost pleading.

“Don’t,” he interrupted, stepping closer until the space between them shrank to nothing. His voice dropped, low and dangerous, carrying both anger and the faint tremor of longing. “Not until I know why.”

Her fingers twisted at the cuff of her sleeve, and for a moment, she didn’t meet his gaze. She swallowed hard. Then, her gaze slowly drifts back to his. “You wouldn’t like the answer,” she murmured, almost to herself.

Bruce leaned closer, the heat of his presence filling the space, his eyes fixed on hers, unyielding. “Try me,” he said, every word measured, cold, and sharp—but beneath it lay everything he couldn’t say aloud. “Because I need to hear it. Now.”

He was desperate. Desperate for an explanation—why she keeps pulling away, why she keeps disappearing without a word. But even more than that, he was desperate to close the distance between them, to stop her from slipping away again, to fix whatever had driven a wedge between them. To fix things with the woman he loved.