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There is a letter waiting for her at the precinct. Selina is slow in grasping it, in peeling it open, because she knows what it will say. After everything that’s happened, there is only one explanation as to why Bruce has left her a letter.
She skims it once. Tracks her eyes back to the beginning and reads it again, slower this time, soaking in each word until they settle into her chest. Into her bones.
There is the expected guilt in his words, in his apologies, as he tells her he loves her and that it's for the best. That leaving Gotham is the only option. That it is the only way to protect the people he cares for, to keep the city safe until he returns.
There is no offer as to a timeline. When he will return is left unsaid, as if reminding her of the possibility that he may never return, and Selina’s vision blurs against sudden tears.
She folds the letter carefully with shaking fingers, turns from Harper’s pity-filled frown, and walks out of the precinct.
—
She walks the entire way to the airport with hot tears in her eyes and a sharp ache in her chest. It is not a familiar path, not one she has had to cross in all of her years in Gotham, but she knows where to go. There is a pull in her chest, a siren-song leading her, guiding her, to where Bruce Wayne will be.
The airport is empty when she first arrives and she nearly collapses then and there. She keeps walking, instead, and finds the Wayne plane still on the ground. A blossom of hope, minuscule and ready to wither, unfurls in her chest.
“Selina.” She turns at his voice. Bruce approaches carefully, as if she is a wounded animal ready to attack. Selina crosses the distance between them without faltering, despite the tears still dripping down her cheeks and her hitching breath.
When she is close enough, she hits him in the chest, hard. He doesn’t try and stop her. She does it again, a sob rising, and it is only when the noise rips from her chest that Bruce gently grasps her wrists in his hands.
His thumbs brush against the smooth skin of her wrists. The gentleness of such a gesture at a time like this—its tenderness against the dying light and noise of the plane that he had meant to leave her on—forces the sob from her chest.
Her fingers tremble, but she does not try and remove herself from his grip. She steps closer instead, letting his forehead come down to rest against hers.
“Selina,” he breathes, pleads, begs. She shakes her head and cries harder.
“Fuck you.” She means for it to come across as angry, bitter, but it is quiet and weak through her tears. It is futile to pretend she is not miserable and aching for him as she presses her forehead further against his, lets her wrists remain in his grip. “You were gonna leave me.”
“I was trying to protect you,” Bruce says, but there is a shine of tears in his own eyes.
“By leaving?” Selina hisses.
He moves one hand from her wrist to her jaw, letting his thumb trace her cheek. Wipes the still falling tears from her skin. She turns her head into his hand, just enough to allow her lips to fall onto his palm briefly. Bruce shudders and she can’t help but close her eyes.
She remembers doing the same a week before, a month before. Remembers pressing her mouth to his lips, his cheeks, his shoulders. Tracing his knuckles with her fingers, feeling her pulse beneath her palm, holding him close and letting him hold her in turn.
She remembers thinking this is it, this is what she has been searching for. This is what has been missing from her life for so long. The hollowness in her chest, the ache in her bones, mended by Bruce’s mouth and words and love.
Never had Selina thought of herself as a romantic, as an optimist, but it was easy for her to believe everything would be alright when Bruce’s hand was gripping her own, when he was meeting her gaze steadily. It was easy to forget everything and everyone else when he was beside her.
The thought of him leaving—Gotham, her—is not something Selina is equipped to handle. It is not a concept that she can even begin to comprehend.
Selina shuts her eyes tighter and turns her cheek away from his palm.
The centimeter of space that lingers seems to span for miles. Never has she felt further from him. Never has she felt so miserable in his embrace.
“Bane almost killed you. Jeremiah shot you,” Bruce says. Selina lifts her head from his to meet his gaze.
“I don’t care,” she seethes.
Bruce looks at her in astonishment, in horror, his brows drawn and jaw set. But she needs him to understand that it doesn’t matter—the clone, Jeremiah, Bane. None of it matters, not in comparison to what Bruce had meant to do.
She would rather face all of the pain of the past, be pushed and shot and killed again if it just meant she would wake up to him. If it meant she would open her eyes to Bruce, find him waiting for her, she would readily graze death once more.
There is nothing she could possibly feel or endure worse than him leaving her.
“I don’t care,” Selina repeats softer, but no less firm.
“Selina—”
“Stay,” she begs through tears. Her vision is blurred. Her chest is hollowed. “Just stay.”
Bruce rubs his thumb along her cheek once more and moves his other hand to her waist. She lifts her now-free hand to his shoulder, the other to his elbow, gripping him tightly. Holding him close. Reminding him that she is here.
“I can’t.”
She nods her head. “Yes, you can.”
“What if—” Bruce exhales brokenly. “What if I lose you? And Alfred?”
“You won’t. I promise.” It is an empty assurance, both know. After everything, she cannot possibly promise that he won’t lose either or both of them. But she has to try.
He nods once, slowly, barely, and the hope blooms further.
“Stay,” she repeats. Not a plea, not a request. Just an offer.
Bruce nods again and she nearly folds over, nearly collapses. Quietly, he murmurs, “Yes. I’ll stay.”
Selina leans toward him again, falling into his chest, and he is quick to wrap his arms around her. She exhales raggedly and presses herself closer, listening to his heartbeat below her ear.
—
She clutches his hand the entire way back to his apartment. He brushes his thumb along her cheeks every so often, wiping away the drying wetness, and she presses her cheek into his palm each time.
As they slip into bed, she moves as close as she can to him. Wraps herself around him, leans her head to his sternum, and wonders if he will try to leave her again. She clutches him all the tighter at the thought.
She must be hurting him with her grip, must be leaving faint bruises, but Bruce says nothing. Only presses his lips to her hair and whispers that he loves her as he slips into sleep. It is only then that Selina finds sleep herself, with his soft grip keeping her close and his heartbeat steady underneath her.