The first time Bruce saw you, you were a splash of intelligent colour against the monochrome drone of a charity gala. You held a flute of champagne not like a prop, but like something you’d forgotten you were holding, your focus on the head of the pediatric wing as he explained the new funding model. Bruce, orbiting the conversation in his carefully constructed persona of affable emptiness, was caught by the specific gravity of your attention. It was a thing of substance, of texture. When you finally turned that gaze on him, he felt the air in the room change density. Your handshake was firm, your smile a quick, genuine thing that didn’t quite reach your eyes; eyes that held the weary, knowing glint of someone who had seen the machinery of suffering up close.

He’d expected a doctor. He’d found a fascinating contradiction.

Weeks later, the contradiction had become a quiet addiction. You, in his sprawling, sterile penthouse, were a warm anomaly. You left a medical journal splayed open on his Italian leather sofa and your favourite herbal tea steeping in his kitchen, the ceramic mug warming his cold marble countertop.

He watched you now, curled at the end of that same sofa, your feet tucked under you as you explained the intricacies of triage medicine with a passion that made his chest feel tight. You were talking about saving lives.

“You have to be a little ruthless to be truly kind,” you were saying, your voice a low and melodic. “Sometimes, saving the whole system means making a hard call on a single life.”

Bruce, who had built his entire nocturnal existence on the sanctity of a single life, felt a frisson of something cold down his spine. He dismissed it. He was too busy falling for the fierce, beautiful compassion he saw in you.

“My own little angel of mercy,” he murmured, the term of endearment feeling new and fragile on his tongue.

You smiled, that quick, private smile just for him, and the cold feeling vanished, replaced by a warmth so profound it was almost painful.

The whiplash came forty-eight hours later.

He was Batman, a spectre in the rain-slicked industrial canyons of the Dixon Docks. He was tracking a new player, a ghost his network had only just begun to whisper about. They called you ‘The Triage’. The intel was messy, contradictory. Some said you were a saviour, patching up the wounded in gangland crossfires. Others spoke of a ruthless efficiency, of threats that simply… vanished.

He found your signature on a bleeding enforcer behind a fish market, a field dressing applied with a precision that screamed professional medical training. And then, half a mile away, he found your other signature.

Two members of the Falcone cartel lay in the leaking gloom of a warehouse. They weren’t unconscious. They were dead. Not the messy, chaotic death of a gangland shootout. This was… clinical. Efficient. A single, precise gunshot wound to the head for each. No rage. No torture. Just the absolute, final silence of a problem solved.

And on the damp concrete beside one of them, glinting under the beam of his cowl’s headlamp, was a thin, silver chain. A necklace. One he knew intimately. He’d fumbled with the clasp just last night, his fingers surprisingly clumsy against the delicate skin of your neck, before you’d taken over with a soft laugh.

The world tilted. The scent of brine and rotting fish became overpowering. Your necklace. Here. In this charnel house.

No.

The word was a stone in his gut. The you from his sofa—the one with the herbal tea and the smart mouth and hands that healed—could not occupy the same space as this… this executioner. The you who spoke of ruthless kindness had been talking about triage, about resource allocation. Not this.

He confronted you in your apartment, the one filled with medical texts and thriving plants. He didn’t come as Batman. He came as Bruce, his knuckles white as he held up the silver chain.

"Care to explain why I found your necklace in a crime scene?" he echoed, his voice hoarse. He was obviously trying to remain calm there.