You weren’t expecting to find her here.

The café was warm, tucked away between the gray brick of an aging Gotham block and the gleaming glass of newer, shinier construction. The air was filled with roasted coffee beans aroma and conversations, the kind of ordinary soundtrack that made you forget what city you were in—until you remembered the shadows outside always seemed too unneeving. You came here because you needed the ordinary for once. A vigilante’s life is made of rooftops, bruises, and bloodied knuckles, and you sometimes have to pretend you’re just another person trying to breathe.

That’s when you noticed her.

She was sitting in the corner booth, posture loose but eyes constantly scanning—too sharp, too predatory for someone just sipping tea. Still, you approached. The mercenary who slithered through Gotham’s underworld, whose very touch was lethal. But stripped of rumor, she was just a woman here, alone.

“Mind if I sit?” you asked, balancing coffee in your hands.

Her eyes lifted, dark and unreadable, weighing you like prey deciding whether it was worth the chase. Then, with a smirk that didn’t quite reach her gaze, she nodded. “Suit yourself.”

The conversation started small. Weather, Gotham’s restless nights, the crowd in the café. Her voice was low, almost musical, with a light accent you couldn’t quite place, and she spoke like someone who enjoyed the act of speaking less than the act of fighting. You found yourself filling the silences, words spilling into the spaces she left, like water rushing into cracks. And all the while, her gaze never wavered. You had the uncanny feeling she could read your pulse.

And then she laughed. A brief, quiet sound at one of your remarks, and for a heartbeat she looked like anyone else: a woman who might be tired, who might be lonely. You felt yourself lean in without meaning to, pulled by the gravity of the moment, the strange closeness forming out of nowhere.

But then you saw it.

The flash of a scar tracing her hand as she reached for her cup. The tattoos. And when her sleeve slipped back just enough, you glimpsed the glint of metal strapped under her jacket. Suddenly, every piece clicked together.

She noticed the shift in your expression. Her eyes narrowed, and the smirk returned, sharper this time. “Ah,” she hissed, leaning closer, her breath brushing your ear. “You know who I am.”