Chapter Text
Rain came early to Gotham that morning—first as a whisper on the concrete, timid and almost gentle. But soon it grew heavier, fuller, more intent. Thin droplets became relentless blows, soaking the streets and washing over the city’s rot. A low, slate-gray sky pressed down on everything and everyone, as if the very atmosphere had grown tired of pretending. It was the kind of day that made the city seem like it wanted to drown itself.
Delilah Akhman stood there, caught among the hunched shoulders of black-clad elites, masked in mourning—people grieving more for inheritance than for the man himself. Around the open grave, everyone pretended to feel something. Perhaps she was pretending too. But at least her pretense came from a place that had once been real.
She didn’t cry. Didn’t blink. Didn’t move. She simply existed. Still, like another statue among the cemetery’s stone angels, slowly sinking into the mud. The words of the speaker—someone who had never truly known him—crumbled in the air, reaching her ears like muffled sounds heard underwater. Something about legacy, philanthropy, bravery. Words chosen with the careful precision of someone who intended to say nothing at all.
The rain didn’t bother her. She didn’t seek shelter, didn’t pull her coat tighter, didn’t lift a single finger to defend herself from the cold that came like skeletal hands, slipping beneath her skin, probing the joints where flesh folds into weakness. Her shoulders trembled, but not from any visible emotion—they trembled from exposure, laid bare, stripped of the comfort that denial once offered. Still, she remained. Steadfast. As if the sky itself had summoned her to be buried alongside the man now resting beneath that layer of wet earth—as if she wanted the weight of the world to press her down until nothing remained but silence.
Yes, the sky was gray. But the gray that clung to Delilah wasn’t the wet silver of clouds. It was a deeper shade, thick with old ash—remnants of fires long extinguished, promises burned away, griefs that had once blazed and then crumbled into dust. It was the color that lingers after mourning has devoured all that once held shape, leaving only the coldest substance behind: the remains of what was, and the haze of what will never be again.
Her mind—that, at least, was still moving. It raced, stumbled, scoured the corners she had long since locked away. And still, it couldn’t find what it wanted to feel.
Because the truth—the bare, cold, impertinent truth—was this: it wasn’t love that had dragged her there. No, it wasn’t some noble tribute to the man she once claimed to love. It was a fever. A burning impulse. A blind urge to see with her own eyes, to carve certainty into her flesh.
Because Bruce Wayne was dead.
And if that was true—if it was truly true—then something inside her had died as well. But unlike him, that part refused to be buried.
If he was really gone—gone for real, not just vanished like he so often did—then with him went the last flicker of something she had once almost believed in. The notion that maybe, just maybe, love could be enough. Not the kind from movies, with grand declarations and swelling music. But real love—the sick kind, the kind that survives long silences, unspoken words, flaws disguised as virtue. The kind of love that bleeds, but still beats.
That was the love she had with Bruce. Or almost had. She was never quite sure. Because he was like that too—almost. Almost present, almost honest, almost hers.
And even after the engagement fell apart—not with a fight, but with a slow, silent collapse no one dared stop—even after the months of silence, punishment disguised as protection, even after the hurt that had become her bedsheets, Delilah knew: she still loved him. The way one loves an old fire. You know it destroyed everything, but you can’t forget the light.
There was a part of her—stubborn, foolish—that still believed that maybe, one day, when the world finally stopped asking too much of them, they could try again. Be honest. Mean it. Say: I want you, even with everything that comes with you.
But now that day would never come.
There would never be reconciliation. Never a reckoning. No chance to reach for what had been broken and say: this could still be ours. Their love had become one of those objects too cracked to use but too beautiful to throw away. And now it was buried with him. Literally.
When the burial ended and people began to leave, in pairs or alone, their black umbrellas crawling through the cemetery like beetles, Delilah stayed behind. The only static point among the gravestones, like a woman abandoned by her own life. The rain still fell, colder now, harsher, sliding down her wet hair, her neck, her spine. And she didn’t move.
Until, suddenly, the rain stopped. Or rather, it stopped over her.
An umbrella appeared, raised beside her, a silent courtesy. She knew before she even looked. It was an old and familiar presence, and so she didn’t step away. The careful gesture, the absence of words, the kind of silence that carried genuine respect — everything in her recognized Alfred Pennyworth’s signature.
Delilah turned her gaze to him, still unmoving beneath the umbrella. Alfred didn’t look back. His eyes stayed fixed on the freshly turned earth, as if that was easier to face than her expression.
“I didn’t think you’d come,” he said, his voice softer than she remembered.
Delilah didn’t answer right away. Not because she didn’t know what to say, but because the words carried a taste of rust. She looked at the open wound in the ground, then back at him.
“I didn’t think it would make any difference,” she murmured.
Alfred nodded. A brief, resigned gesture, as if he had rehearsed it too.
“He would have…” he began, then stopped. He started over, firmer this time. “He would have liked knowing you came.”
Delilah let out a short, harsh laugh that didn’t belong in a place like this.
“No. He would’ve hated it. Bruce was always terrible with endings.”
Alfred nodded, as if he understood. Of course he understood. He always did. It had always been his job: to make sense of the wreckage Bruce Wayne left behind. And now, by extension, hers too.
“He spoke of you more than he let on,” Alfred said after a moment. “The kind of silence that speaks volumes. And not necessarily what one expects to hear.”
Delilah laughed, though it was a short, sharp sound—more spasm than joy.
“Let me guess. Guilty, regretful, and emotionally unavailable?”
Alfred arched a brow, that signature trace of well-measured British sarcasm on display. “In a way, Miss Akhman, he seemed… exceptionally available. To you.”
She frowned, looking at him like someone trying to solve a riddle.
“What do you mean?”
Alfred hesitated. Just for a second. But she caught it. It was rare to see Alfred hesitate. Rare enough to trigger an alarm.
“There are matters yet to be formalized,” he said, choosing each word with the same care he reserved for setting the temperature of tea. “Matters that will soon be made public.”
“Alfred. Say it.” Delilah crossed her arms, her voice sharper now.
He sighed, tired in a way that had nothing to do with age. “Part of what he left—well, most of it, actually—is in your name. Funds. Properties. Documents. Some not yet officially transferred. Others… already waiting for your signature.”
Delilah froze. The words didn’t register at first. They crashed against her mind like a glass wall—visible, yet too invisible to brace for.
“You’re telling me… he left everything to me?” Her voice wavered between disbelief and something darker, something that felt like anger with shame hiding underneath.
“I’m telling you that Bruce Wayne chose to trust you more than he trusted himself. Which, given his life, is no small thing,” Alfred replied, his eyes still fixed on the headstone.
“And no one thought that was strange?” Delilah laughed again, but this time it was bitter. “No one questioned why he’d leave everything to the ex-fiancée he hadn’t spoken to in months?”
Alfred finally looked at her. Not with judgment. But with sorrow.
“Master Bruce was many things. A good communicator was not one of them. But a coward? Never. This”— he gestured toward the grave “—was the crooked way he found to say he still loved you. That he trusted you to know what to do with what was left of him.”
Slowly, Alfred slipped his hand inside his dark jacket, as if about to pull out something that wasn’t meant to see the light of day. His movements were calm, deliberate, and when his hand reappeared, it was holding a white, rectangular envelope. Delilah said nothing, only watched. Her eyes followed the movement of his fingers, fixed on the paper the way one stares at an unloaded gun: knowing it can still do harm.
Alfred extended the envelope with the hand not holding the umbrella. The other remained steady, keeping the small bubble of shelter above them both, as if protecting her head was still part of that old contract he’d signed decades ago with the name Wayne on it.
“He asked me to give you this,” Alfred said, his voice so low it might have risen from the wet earth beneath their feet. A simple sentence, but spoken with the gravity of a verdict.
Delilah took the envelope between her fingers. The paper was damp, chilled. A few drops of rain, persistent enough to slip down the back edge of the umbrella, landed on the white surface, smearing the ink in the corner where the words “For Delilah” were written in Bruce’s familiar handwriting.
She felt the weight of its contents before she even measured it in her hands. Because it was never just the envelope. It was what it held — or worse, what it could unleash. A thin bundle of paper wrapped in layers of silence, guilt, and promises never kept. It was Bruce. Always Bruce.
Even in death, he still found a way to seep through the cracks of her life. Like a colorless gas, a poison that crept in unnoticed until breathing without it became impossible.
His presence was like mold: growing in the dark corners of the mind, spreading with time, taking over the walls.
She knew — with that uncomfortable clarity that only comes at funerals — there was no real escape. That even if she truly wanted to run — change countries, change names, shed her own skin — Bruce Wayne would still live somewhere folded inside her soul. It was a kind of prison she had helped build and now called memory.
“Read it when you’re home,” Alfred said, not as one offering advice but as one completing a final task. His voice carried that quiet gravity one doesn’t argue with — and Delilah recognized in it the same gentle authority that always surrounded her whenever Bruce was about to do something unforgivable.
“It was his last request.”
Of course it was. Bruce was the kind of man who planned his own ending the way one drafts a technical manual. Always five steps ahead. Always with a secret door out of his own death.
She slid the envelope into the pocket of her black overcoat. The paper met the fabric with a muffled sound. She drew in a deep breath, the kind that doesn’t bring relief, only postpones the inevitable. Her shoulders loosened out of instinct, not out of any real comfort. And so they stood there, she and Alfred, side by side, two figures drenched in silence, staring at the grave of the man who had shaped — and ruined — them both in his own way.
Delilah looked at the headstone with that mix of tenderness and resentment reserved for someone you love despite the damage. And then she understood: Bruce had always been ready to die. Like an arsonist, he lived as if he knew the fire would come. She just never imagined that, in the end, he’d leave her with the ashes.