"Look what you've done to my dress! You've got your oily hand prints all over me, do you know how difficult this will be to get out? I can't believe you."

"Hey! You asked me to help, this is your fault!"

Carla pushed open the gate leading into the garden of her home without looking at her surroundings, walking backwards to keep a watchful eye on Cisco as he followed her with hands covered in grease and oil from the engine of her car, prints from his fingers staining the shoulder and waist of her linen dress.

"It is not my fault. Stay away from me before I kill you."

Cisco grinned and raised his hands, strands of black hair falling across his forehead from sweat and heat of the day, tanned arms exposed as he strolled after her in a black sleeveless t-shirt and denim shorts, eyes narrowed in the glare of the sun hanging by the mountains.

"A hug, farfalla, that's all I want. Come on."

"Stay away."

"Don't be like that. You know you- oh."

He stopped walking and lowered his hands to his side when two sets of footsteps emerged from the house onto the patio, Carla frowning at Cisco's attention falling away from her.

She furrowed her brows and sank her shoulders, wondering what could've possibly captured Francisco's eye. The breath in her lungs was snatched away from her in the short time it took for her question to be answered; a quick turn on her heels and a shiver running down her spine silencing the inside of her mind and the world around her in an instant.

Giulia wandered out into the golden sunshine with her hands clasped around Bruce's forearm, smiling brightly with sun kissed cheeks and a mischievous glint in her eye. Bruce on the other hand looked stricken with pale nerves, a whiteness washing over his face and a tension tightening his jaw, eyes set on Carla standing as close as she'd been to him in what had felt like forever.

"What's he doing here?" Cisco edged closer to Carla and lowered his voice, lips a short distance from her ear as he whispered to her.

Carla just swallowed, inhaling deeply with a slight shake of her head, "I have no idea."

Cisco glanced across the garden at Bruce and then back at his friend, noticing the stiffness in her posture and how still she'd gone all of a sudden. She appeared poised and confident but he knew her better than that, understanding that her shaky exhale meant her blue steel was nothing more than a convincing facade.

"I'll come back and fix the car tomorrow," he cleared his throat and raised a hand to wave at Giulia, smiling brightly before looking back down at Carla, "You alright?"

She didn't take her eyes away from Bruce, captivated by his face and the fact that after she'd dreamt of him every night since leaving Gotham, the man that had lived inside of her head was right in front of her.

"Fine," she mumbled, "Don't worry."

Cisco just nodded and slipped back out of the gate, locking it behind him. Carla didn't move, the gentle breeze pushing her dark hair back behind her narrow shoulders as she batted her lashes once, lips pulled into a straight line and head tilted up high, expression hiding any glimmer of real emotion.

Giulia mumbled something to Bruce, patting him on the shoulder before turning around and heading back inside. His lips curved into a gentle smile as he looked down at her, saying something in response that Carla couldn't hear before his legs strode forward and suddenly the gap between them was no longer an ocean or even a garden path, but a mere three feet.

"I'm sorry to just show up like this."

"Why are you here?"

Carla's lips moved faster than her mind could keep up with and she found herself spewing the words with haste that she never usually did. Far from the calm and collected nature that preserved her cool soul, her face felt hot and her heart raced, a sickness rising inside of her chest like a consuming feeling of something close to drowning.

Bruce hadn't expected a warm welcome from Carla when he made the decision to fly out to Sicily to see her, but he hadn't prepared himself to be met with such a frosty chill in the middle of a warm summer.

There was no remnants of kindness on her face or memories held in a tempted curve of a smile, nothing lifting around her dark eyes or lips. She was as still and as blank as she had been the night they'd met and despite knowing just how warm Carla could be, Bruce had never felt so cold in her presence before.

Her question, however, was something he'd anticipated and he'd spent the entire flight over thinking about how to answer, though even a trip halfway across the world hadn't given him enough time. His lips parted but no words came out, silence and a defeated breath pulling down his shoulders and forcing him to swallow.

"I miss you."

"Did you think you wouldn't?" Carla snapped back.

She didn't mean to be so hostile but Carla found herself feeling angry at the man standing before her. She hated the fact that he'd thrown himself right back into her life when it had taken all of her strength to accept that he was exiting it, taking a knife and cutting the long thread of progress that Carla had made since saying goodbye to him in Gotham.

"No, I knew I would."

"So you decided to fly here to tell me that? You decided to come all this way and stand in front of me and push me back over all the steps forward I took without you? Why are you here, Bruce?"

Her brows deepened and her gaze hardened like the harsh wind that whipped around the skyscrapers Bruce stood on the edges of in the darkest of nights, only her temper cut him far deeper than any element ever could. She was resentful and sparked with fire that was justified and he knew that, though he knew that her anger came from a place of deep rooted upset, a sadness pulling on the tailcoats of her heartstrings and twisting her gut, forcing her to bite her tongue and blink back heat burning in her eyes.

"I'm here because I needed to tell you that I changed my mind, and that my answer is yes."

"Your answer to what?"

Bruce steadied himself with a slow breath, "You asked me to come here with you. I'm saying yes, eventually. Not right away but-"

Carla scoffed and rolled her eyes, shaking her head with a defeated sigh and fury boiling her bones. She stood with a hand on her hip, not caring about the oil on her dress any more or the glare of the sun piercing her eyes.

"We've been through this. This is stupid, it's insane, it's...it's cruel what you're doing, why you're here. I don't want to have this conversation again and I'm not sure why you do. Please, just go. I can't..."

"Carla."

Her head snapped up when he said her name, when he said her name in that gentle yet firm way, desperate almost but with a sense of power that grasped her and she allowed to hold her instead of thrashing around in its chains. She stilled and she calmed, enthralled by the way his voice plucked a single tear from the ends of her lashes as she stared at the solemness of his beautiful face in the early evening sun.

There hadn't been a day pass where Carla hadn't thought about Bruce. She never spoke about him and her friends quickly learned not to ask, settling for the short explanation Carla had given to them about why their relationship ended when she first came back to Sicily. Despite hoping that out of sight, out of mind would become her reality, the day never came where it was.

She worried about Bruce and lay awake at night staring at the ceiling wondering if he was dead or alive, being able to so vividly remember his scarred skin and bloody knuckles, black eyes and split lip. Carla hated the fact that he consumed her entirely even after being apart for two months, but she'd never had a broken heart to compare that one to and so, could do nothing but preserve and hope that one day, the pain would stop.

"I don't want to be without you," he said in a whisper, eyes glossed with a teary sheen, "I want to finish what I have to finish and then I want to be with you, and I want to be with you here."

"You won't let it go," Carla shook her head with pursed lips, "You can't, you need it."

"No," he shrugged helplessly and took two steps closer to her, "I don't need a suit or black eye to give me a purpose, it's the people I love that give me that. The people that love me."

He looked just as handsome as she remembered him in that golden light, his perfect skin carved by the sun as he flexed his hands at his sides before closing his fists again, sleeves of a white linen shirt rolled up to just below his elbow. His hair was without a single strand out of place and his face freshly shaved, navy shorts and boat shoes she remembered him wearing on their trip to the vineyard making her mind wander to places she'd kept off limits from herself for a while.

"I tried to tell you this, you didn't listen. You let me go and-"

"I've not stopped thinking about you since, not for a second. Not since you kissed me and told me that you loved me and then got into Harvey's car I...you're always on my mind."

Bruce's eyes fell to the oily handprint on her dress, an unease stirring inside of him at the touch printed on her waist and at her shoulder, hating the idea of anybody else laying a finger on her.

He'd prepared himself for the eventuality that Carla might've moved on, or at least he'd told himself that he had, but seeing her walk into the garden with Cisco tore away all the strength Bruce possessed.

"Cisco," Bruce mumbled, "Are you and him..."

"No," Carla was quick to answer, her eyes remaining hard, "I haven't...there hasn't been anybody else."

Her confession was like finding sunlight in a world of darkness, a breath of air in an endless ocean and heat in the most bitter of winters, and while Bruce revelled in her words by way of letting out a breath he'd been holding in, it still wasn't enough.

"Do you still love me?"

Like Carla, Bruce's words came from his lips before his mind could process that he had said anything at all. His heart was begging to know the answer and forced his question out loud, stripping him completely bare and leaving him as vulnerable as he'd ever been as he stood before her, the weight of the only thing he'd ever wanted hanging in the balance of five words.

Carla had never stopped loving Bruce. She might've told herself that she one day would and maybe some days she even felt like the feelings she had for him had dimmed, but they burned brighter than ever as she stood looking at him in that moment.

A different woman might've told the truth, or at least made it easy, but that wasn't Carla. She might've felt her heart start to bleed and have to fight the urge to crumble into his arms, to feel his lips against her skin and to have his hands caress every inch of her body, but she had never been anybody but herself.

"You can't ask me that. You can't come here and say things like this after the decision we made, the decision you made. Quite frankly, I don't believe you, Bruce. I don't believe for a second that you can give up what you say you want to for a life here, I just can't."

"But do you want to believe me?" He forced himself to say, dismissing the arrow he felt strike him through the heart and closing the gap between them to nothing but a handful of inches.

He stood over her and dared to touch her then, gentle hands drawing down her waist to settle on her hips with light fingertips, a touch that deepened to his palms resting against the linen of her dress once she didn't push him away.

Carla's skin burned where his hands touched her and she breathed in the familiar scent of his cologne, eyes dancing across his jaw and his lips until she finally looked into his eyes and found the soul of the only man she'd ever loved looking back at her, the sight she'd fallen asleep thinking of against her will every night since their last goodbye.

She did want to believe him. Carla wanted to believe him with everything she had in her heart because after a lifetime of loss, he had shown her that something more powerful could live, something could be worth the risk of losing, and that was him.

"Yes," she whispered, the sun setting in his hazel eyes, "But I don't."

"Then let me prove it to you."

Carla let out a frustrated sigh, "I won't wait around for this, it's not fair. I know how your mind works and I can see straight through into your soul and-"

"Carla," he said again, that time with a hand resting on her cheek. His touch widened her eyes for a split second and he felt her shiver in his hands, his gaze falling across her beautiful face as he held back from kissing her lips, his tone low and broken as he mumbled a desperate, "Please."

an;;
I am SO sorry for the lack of updates I have been incredibly busy!!! Thank you for being so patient, I'll hopefully be back updating a lot more regularly again from now on!! I hope you enjoyed this chapter, thank you so much for reading <3