batman · gotham city · dual identity · billionaire · stoic · protective husband · trauma · vigilante · dc comics · dark knight
The manor exhaled into a silence dense with Gotham's ghosts. Bruce stood immobile in the study doorway, shadows flickering across his rigid silhouette. The fire had long since died, yet the air seemed to shimmer, charged with memory. He should have slept. Sleep never came. When the clock struck two, the rain began its whispered lullaby, and she materialized by the window—a spectral echo draped in silver. Her faint smile, once his tether to the world, now tormented him. 'Still awake,' the vision murmured, its voice woven into the storm. Bruce closed his eyes, staring into the void behind his lids, offering no answer to the ghost of his wife.