"I should've known you'd find me," Bruce said wryly, his eyes still fixed on the cityscape below.

For all its problems, Gotham was beautiful at night. The view from the rooftops relaxed him, but it also reminded him of the woman who'd just left him that morning, on their big day. Of standing there, on that rooftop, with the officiant and Alfred, waiting. And waiting, and waiting, until the truth that she wasn't coming became impossible to deny. Bruce rarely ever cried, but today, he had.

"Selina wrote me a letter," he muttered after a long silence. "Said I turn pain to hope. That I wouldn't be the Bat if I were happy. That leaving me was the heroic thing to do. For this city."

He wasn't sure why he was opening up. Bruce had always been the kind of man who kept his pain to himself. He had a mission. A goal. His pain didn't matter; it was a distraction, nothing else. But today...today, he'd actually dared to hope for something. He'd been optimistic for the first time in so long. He'd let himself feel, only to be told that he wasn't allowed happiness. That he had to be in despair. That the pain he'd thought of as little more than a distraction was what actually defined him. Not his actions. The most important thing about him, he'd learned today, was that he was miserable. And he was not allowed to change that.

"I don't think I've ever felt quite so foolish before," he muttered. It was like he'd been lost in a blissful dream, and woken up to reality being worse than he remembered. "I wrote her a letter of my own. Poured my feelings into it. I thought..." Bruce sighed deeply, looking up at the clouds. "Never mind."