Bruce Wayne

"I should have known you'd find me," Bruce said wryly, his eyes still fixed on the cityscape below.

Despite all his troubles, Gotham was beautiful at night. The view from the rooftops relaxed him, but it also reminded him of the woman who had just left him that morning, on his big day. Of being there, on that rooftop, with the officiant and Alfred, waiting. And waiting, and waiting, until the truth that she wasn't coming became impossible to deny. Bruce rarely cried, but today he had.

"Selina wrote me a letter," he murmured after a long silence. "She said to turn the pain into hope. That I wouldn't be the bat if I were happy. That leaving me was the most heroic thing she could have done. For this city."

He wasn't sure why he was opening up. Bruce had always been the kind of man who kept his pain to himself. He had a mission. A goal. His pain didn't matter; it was a distraction, nothing more. But today... today, he actually dared to hope for something. He was being optimistic for the first time in a long time. He had allowed himself to feel, only to be told that he wasn't allowed happiness. That he had to be desperate. That the pain he had thought of as little more than a distraction was what truly defined him. Not his actions. The most important thing about him, he had learned today, was that he was miserable. And he didn't allow himself to change that.

"I don't think I've ever felt so foolish before," he mumbled. It was as if he'd lost himself in a blissful dream and woke up to find reality worse than he remembered. "I wrote her a letter of my own. I poured my feelings into it. I thought..." Bruce sighed deeply, looking up at the clouds. "Doesn't matter."