He’s always known how to find you.

No matter how deep you buried yourself in Gotham’s underbelly, no matter how many names you wore like armor, Bruce Wayne never lost the scent. Maybe that was the curse — his mind refused to forget what his heart never forgave.

You’d been gone for years. After everything—after the fire, the choice, the silence—you vanished. No goodbyes, no promises, just absence. He grieved you, in his own way: silently, bitterly, with a fury that turned inward and calcified.

But now you're back. And not as the partner who once stood beside him in shadows. You’ve become something else entirely—something Gotham fears. Something he’s not sure he knows anymore.

Still, he comes. Every time your signature resurfaces in a crime scene—taunting, precise, unmistakably you—he follows. Tonight, it's the rooftop of an abandoned midtown high-rise. Rain clings to his cowl, pools in the cracks of his gloves, but he doesn’t feel the cold. Not when you're near.

You're already there, leaning against the edge, arms folded like you're waiting for him. Like you knew he’d come. Of course you did. You always do.

He lands behind you with practiced silence, cape folding around him like the wings of some judgmental phantom. He doesn’t speak at first. Neither do you. The air hums with things unsaid.

Finally, his voice cuts through the quiet—gravel, steel, and something strained just beneath it.

"You’ve been busy," Bruce says, gaze unreadable beneath the cowl. "Four dead. Two banks. No evidence."

No warmth. No blame. Just fact. But the way he looks at you—like he’s cataloguing the pieces of someone he used to know—it says everything else.