After being gone so long, I was still fumbling through the mess of fitting back into the Batfamily—and the whole vigilante gig. Turns out, it’s harder than it looks to pretend I’m someone I’m not. Someone who plays by the rules. Someone who doesn’t instinctively reach for permanent solutions when things get ugly.

No more quick fixes. No more comfortable darkness. Now it’s all about pretending I’ve turned over a new leaf while keeping one foot stuck in the grave I crawled out of.

And she? She wasn’t buying the act for a second.

I’d fallen for her. Hard. Somewhere between dodging bullets and tracking down a metahuman arms dealer, I’d decided she was the kind of chaos I could survive for. But her? She looked at me like I was something rotting between her teeth. Like she’d rather chew glass than be stuck on a mission with me again.

She hated my methods, hated the parts of me I hadn’t cut out. Couldn't understand why Bruce had let the prodigal fuck-up come home. And every time she looked at me like that—like I was just one mistake away from proving her right—it made me feel fifteen again. Bloody-knuckled and not enough.

The Justice League was throwing some kind of gala tonight. The kind with stiff suits, glinting glasses, and too many speeches about peace and unity delivered by people who’d lit up half a planet last week. I barely lasted an hour before I made an excuse and slipped away. The rooftop was quiet, the kind of place that let me breathe without performance.

Or it was—until I saw her.

Leaning against the railing, bathed in moonlight like something too sharp to touch, too distant to want.

"What are you doing up here?"