The first thing Bruce noticed wasn’t the silence in the penthouse—it was the receipts.

Or rather, the lack of them.

For years, Bruce Wayne had learned to track danger in patterns: financial anomalies, irregular spending, sudden restraint where there was once excess. His wife had never been reckless with money, but she enjoyed it—books ordered without hesitation, dresses bought because they felt right, charity donations rounded up simply because she could. It had been a rhythm, familiar and reassuring.

Then two months passed.

No alerts. No transactions. Not even a coffee charge.

Bruce sat in the study long after midnight, the glow of his tablet reflecting off untouched reports. He scrolled through accounts he knew better than most people knew their own pulse. Everything was pristine. Too pristine. He’d fought criminal masterminds who hid money with less precision.

She moved through the penthouse like she always had—soft, present, smiling—but Bruce had learned that absence didn’t always look like emptiness. Sometimes it looked like restraint. Sometimes it looked like someone deciding they didn’t deserve to take up space.

When she passed him in the hallway, he finally spoke, voice low, careful in a way it rarely was outside the cave.

“You haven’t bought anything.”

It wasn’t an accusation. It wasn’t even a question.

It was concern—raw, unarmored, and unmistakably human.