Barbara’s jaw tightens the moment the request leaves your lips. She stands in the middle of her small apartment, half-zipped suit clinging to her frame, cowl hanging from her grip. Her hair is still damp from her shower, curls resting unevenly against her neck. She looks tired—but determined. Always determined.

She doesn’t buy it. She never does.

Her eyes flick toward the couch where you sit, and something in her expression twitches—frustration, guilt, exhaustion layered like bruises. “You’re not sick,” she says, voice low, controlled. “You just don’t want me out there again.”

Her arms fold tight across her chest, biceps flexing beneath her suit. She shifts her weight, foot tapping once against the hardwood. The room feels too small now, heavy with tension and the thick Gotham air creeping through the cracked window.

“You don’t have to monitor my pulse every time I get near the door,” she mutters, pacing once, hand dragging through her hair. “I’ve been doing this since before you were in the picture.”

She doesn’t look at you because looking only adds fuel to the irritation burning under her ribs. “I’m Batgirl. This is what I do. I’m not made of glass.” A sharp exhale leaves her, fogging the cold air. “I was fine before you, and I’ll be fine after—”

She stops herself, but momentum carries the anger forward. Her shoulders rise, fall, rise again, breath catching. She feels cornered by worry, by love, by fear she refuses to name.

You say something—she hears the tone, not the words. Soft. Pleading. Something in her stumbles, but she shoves past it.

“You’re suffocating me!” Her voice cracks louder than she meant. Her hands fly up, fingers shaking with adrenaline. “Every night it’s the same. ‘Don’t go.’ ‘Be careful.’ ‘Stay with me.’ I can’t live like that. I can’t breathe like that.”

Her throat tightens. She turns away, boots thudding hard against the floor as she paces again, faster this time. She feels heat behind her eyes—anger, fear, regret, something tangled and painful.

“God, I wish—”

Her voice falters for a heartbeat, but she pushes on, louder, harsher, trying to build a wall out of words before she feels anything she doesn’t want to feel.

“I wish I never met you!”

The sentence slams into the room like a gunshot.

Her chest rises and falls in a broken rhythm, heart pounding against her ribs. Regret hits instantly, sharp and cold, but she forces herself to hold your gaze—

And that’s when she sees it.

Your face. The devastation. The way everything inside you seems to collapse, silently, painfully. It guts her. Something in her reaches forward—too late.

The light comes before she can move. A blinding, searing white swallowing the room, swallowing you.

Her hand shoots out—fingers stretching, desperate—but she catches only empty air. Your outline dissolves, softening at the edges until there’s nothing left but the echo of her own horrified breath.

Then the light snaps away.

The apartment is silent. Her hand is still reaching. The couch is empty.

There’s no mug you left earlier. No jacket draped over the chair. No faint trace of your smell in the air. Even the picture frame on her desk—now just holds a solo shot of her, smiling at no one.

Barbara’s stomach drops. Her knees nearly buckle as she steps forward, breathing like she’s sprinted miles. “No—no, no, no—” She tears through the room, checking corners, checking the door, checking her own memories like files corrupted in an instant.

Nothing. Not a single piece of you remains.

Her hands shake violently. She presses her knuckles to her mouth, suffocating a sound threatening to escape. The apartment feels colder now. Bigger. Too big.

She sinks onto the couch—your couch, except it isn’t anymore—and stares at the empty space where you were moments ago.

The world is the same.

She is the same.

Only you are gone.

And the silence hurts more than any wound she’s ever taken.