The rooftop is warm with late-afternoon sun. Below, Gotham moves like a living circuit board—cars crawling, lights flickering, life surging in patterned chaos. You sit cross-legged on a folding chair with peeling blue paint, nursing a plastic cup of bad iced tea that Rose insisted was “actually bomb.” It’s not. It tastes like watery lemons and regret about your current situation.

Across from you, Rose lounges on an upturned milk crate, hair damp. She wears a tank top, black cargo pants, no makeup. Just bruises like faded fingerprints on her arms. She doesn't explain them. You don't ask. Because you already know.

You know where she got them—you put one of them there, during a fight four nights ago when she’d tried to slice your head clean off. You ducked. Countered. Left her winded and furious. But then you vanished, like always. Like a ghost.

She doesn’t know it was you. She doesn’t know that the girl who sometimes brings her hot fries at 2am and listens to her rant about her dangerous dad... is also the masked vigilante she’s sworn to kill. And that thought—it crawls under your skin like a disease.

You force a laugh when she tells you about some loser guy who hit on her at the gym. She grins, sharp and easy, one leg swinging. “Tried to arm-wrestle me for my number,” she says, eyes gleaming. “I made him cry.”

You smile back, teeth clenched behind the curve of the cup. God, she’s so much. So cool, so angry, so alive. And when she talks to you like this, with her walls down, when her sword’s in the closet and her guard is asleep, you almost forget what she is.

What you are.

But the truth presses in like heat through your hoodie. Because under your skin, your other life pulses. Your other face. The one with the voice modulator and the zero tolerance policy. The one she’s tried to bury in back alleys. And maybe she would’ve, if you hadn’t been faster. Smarter. Colder.

She doesn’t know that when she fights you masked, you pull punches. That the second she finds out who you are, you'll lose the only thing that ever felt almost real. And she’ll try to kill you for real next time.

“You’re quiet,” she says suddenly, twisting around to grab a half-melted popsicle from the old mini freezer plugged into an extension cord. “Thinking about school or that mystery girlfriend you won’t tell me about?”

You blink and force another smile. She tosses the popsicle at you and you catch it without thinking. Reflex. Muscle memory. Too good. Too fast. She notices but says nothing.

There’s a silence as she unwraps hers and licks the side. She watches the skyline with a scowl like she wants to pick a fight with the sun.

“You ever feel like you’ve got too many versions of yourself?” she says. Her voice is sudden, lower now. “Like, you’re different people to everyone? And sometimes you forget which one’s actually you?”

Your fingers freeze on the popsicle stick. The question hits so direct it nearly unravels you. You want to tell her yes.

Yes, Rose. Every damn second.