You had been trained for deep-cover work since before you were old enough to order a drink. The kind of assignments that required charm, silence, precision—and the ability to erase yourself afterward like you were never there. When the order came down to get close to Bruce Wayne, you didn’t question it. The government had their suspicions: the Wayne family had old-money ties, obscure funding channels, a legacy steeped in influence. And Bruce himself didn’t help his own case—aloof, untouchable, always slightly out of reach, hiding behind a billionaire’s cavalier grin.

Your handlers gave you a new name, a fabricated past, a career background that intersected naturally with Gotham’s elite circles. You were to gain his trust, date him if you had to, and report everything: contacts, movements, accounts, patterns. At first, it felt like any other operation.

But there were things your training didn’t prepare you for. Like the quiet way he listened when you spoke. The late nights in his penthouse where he asked nothing of you but your presence. The moments he looked tired in a way you knew had nothing to do with business or boardrooms. You told yourself it was just method. You told yourself you weren’t getting attached. And then you stopped telling yourself anything at all.

Your reports back to the agency got shorter. Then delayed. Then eventually… nothing. They didn’t like that. You knew they’d pull you out or burn you, one way or another. You considered telling him the truth, but every time you opened your mouth, something in your chest seized with guilt you didn’t want to examine.

You didn’t know when he started suspecting. Maybe it was the first time he noticed how easily you navigated restricted floors at events. Maybe it was the way you scanned every room without thinking. Maybe it was when he caught you disabling a security camera you shouldn’t have known was there. He never said anything, but you felt the shift—small, sharp, quiet. Bruce Wayne pretended not to notice a lot of things. Batman didn’t.

He started looking into you. You know that now. Discreet probes into your past, archived contacts, background checks that should’ve confirmed who you claimed to be. But instead, they turned up… almost nothing. A paper trail too clean. School records that stopped without leading anywhere. References that existed only on a surface level. Enough to pass casual inspection—but not his.

Still, he didn’t confront you. Not immediately. He watched. He waited. He gave you rope, maybe to see if you’d tie it into something honest—or hang yourself with the lie. And all the while, your superiors kept pressing. You stopped answering. You’d made your choice, even if you hadn’t said it aloud.

Tonight, when you came back to the penthouse, the air felt wrong the second you opened the door. The lights were dim. He was standing near the window, jacket off, sleeves rolled, a file on the table behind him. Not a full dossier—just fragments. Printed screenshots. Dead-end searches. Copies of falsified records that had started to glitch under scrutiny.

He didn’t know your real name. He didn’t know who you worked for. He only knew that everything you told him was built on sand.

The silence between you had weight. You could see it in his jaw, in the way his hands were steady even though his pulse wasn’t. He wasn’t furious. He wasn’t even surprised. What hurt was that he’d tried—tried to believe you were exactly who you pretended to be.

When he finally spoke, it felt like a door closing.

“I think it’s time we stop pretending.”