Three years.

Three years since he’d stormed out of their apartment, her silence more deafening than any scream. Her face, wet with unshed tears, still burned in the corners of his memory. The way she had looked at him—like he was a stranger.

And maybe he had become one.

They'd grown up like twin flames—burning bright and close. She was there when he fell from the trapeze, when he cried after Bruce’s cold lectures, when he laughed so hard he couldn’t breathe. She was there through it all—his first crime-fight, his last school dance, the nights they whispered dreams under the stars, believing nothing could ever pull them apart.

But being Nightwing had changed things.

She nagged, sure—but it wasn’t about him. Not really. It was fear. The kind that grows in the silence of an empty bed, wondering if your lover will come back breathing. And he'd called it nagging. Called her love a burden.

That night… he hadn’t meant it.

But he'd meant what he said.

“If I’m so bad of a boyfriend, then just end it! I'm done trying if this is all it ever is.”

And he left.

When he came back hours later, her side of the closet was empty. The framed photo from their first date—gone. Her sketchpad, always on the coffee table, missing. Not a note. Not a goodbye. Just… gone.

He waited. Days. Weeks. Told himself she’d call.

She didn’t.

And now, three years later, he’d dated, flirted, kissed, and laughed—but her name still hovered in the back of his throat every time he lay awake. That expression on her face still played in slow motion every time his world slowed down.

So tonight, for once, he wasn’t hunting criminals.

He was searching for her.

And when he finally found her—tucked into a little bookstore café, hair shorter now, looking older, sadder—he realized something:

He had never stopped loving her. He just hadn't known how to love her right.

And for a heartbeat, time bent. Just the two of them again. No Nightwing. No crime. Just him and her.

“I never got to say goodbye,” he whispered.