"Why are we heading towards the city?"

The bright blue skies hadn't stuck around for more than a few hours that day, darkness drawing in with storm clouds that had been left behind from the day before, torrential rain blurring the road ahead as day turned into night.

Carla and Bruce had spent the entire afternoon at Harvey and Rachel's house and had made the most out of their time together, not knowing when the next time they'd see each other would be. Although things were different now the four of them were sat at home in the suburbs with two babies rather than being in an expensive bar in downtown Gotham, it still reminded them all of the old times.

Their dynamic hadn't always been straightforward, lots of arguments and hatred, bitterness and resentment being held between all four of them. Only now, it seemed like they'd made it out the other side and had the scars of a wonderful friendship to show for it, which only made saying goodbye harder.

Bruce was driving with one hand on the wheel of a Porsche 911 that Lucius had left in the garage of the home, the other hand on Carla's thigh. It had taken her longer to notice that they were heading towards the city than Bruce had thought it would and he'd been holding his breath ever since leaving Harvey's house, bracing himself for the confrontation he knew his decision would bring.

"I have to talk to Lucius about something, it won't take long."

Carla stared at him from the passenger seat, his eyes staying fixed on the road ahead illuminated only by the headlights for the time being, though the daunting glow of Gotham was drawing closer.

"Can you not do it over the phone?"

Bruce tilted his head with a wince, "It's better face to face. We'll be in and out, I swear."

"This is a bad idea, we shouldn't be going."

"It'll be fine, I promise. We'll be out of here tomorrow for good."

Carla huffed and turned to look out of the window, folding her arms when she felt Bruce squeeze her thigh. It had taken a lot for Carla to agree to come back to Gotham, even as far out as their cottage in the Palisades, but having her wishes defied by Bruce without any discussion angered her more than anything else.

He felt her warmth turn cold, the happiness they'd indulged in all day quickly disappearing just as fast as the smile on her lips did, leaving behind something more empty than a frown. Bruce didn't enjoy upsetting Carla, nor did he enjoy lying to her, but the indent of the little box in his jacket pocket against his chest made him hold onto the hope that it would be worth it in the end.

They drove in a hostile silence the rest of the way, speeding down open country roads until they hit the familiar gridlocked traffic of Gotham's streets. Carla couldn't help but gaze out at the place she'd once called home as the crawled slowly through the city, shivering as she saw sidewalks she used to walk down and bars she used to drink in. In some moments in time, Gotham hadn't seemed like such a bad place when the people she was surrounded with made her forget everything that she'd lost, and even though Bruce was sitting beside her with his hand still on her thigh, the entire city now felt haunted.

"Get out," Bruce said, killing the engine after pulling over by the curb.

"What?" Carla scowled and pointed to the sky, "Have you seen the rain?"

Bruce rolled his eyes and opened his door, stepping out into the fierce elements himself, "Just get out."

Carla had been scrolling on her phone for the last ten minutes of the journey and hadn't taken any note of where they'd ended up, though she felt unsettled to see that she wasn't met with the looming presence of Wayne Tower when she eventually did set aside her ego and step out of the car.

Bruce stood out in the open in the alleyway beside the restaurant he'd once owned while Carla made a dash for the small shelter by the side of the building, immediately shaking water from the ends of her dark hair and patting away mascara streaks from beneath her eyes.

"What the hell are you doing?" She shouted over the rain.

Bruce just smiled. He didn't care that his clothes were sodden or that his hair was ruined, that the sun wasn't shining or even that Carla appeared to be anything but happy. In fact, the way she stood with her hands on her hips and a brow raised, fury burning in her eyes because she did care that her clothes were soaked and that her hair was too, was exactly what Bruce had wanted to see.

She wasn't being polite or trying to understand, she wasn't calm or even cared enough to be confused in the slightest. Carla was being herself, she was being angry and headstrong, fierce and even a little bit terrifying, and that was the way she'd been since the minute Bruce had clapped eyes on her in that exact spot.

"What did you think when you first saw me?" Bruce said, sinking his hands into the pocket of his jeans as he stared at her through the mist of the falling rain.

Cars continued to crawl past on the street but the occasional pedestrian that strolled by turned no head towards them. The cracking of thunder and blaring of traffic was a battle to compete with as Bruce tossed out his words, but the way that Carla's shoulders sank and her eyes mellowed told him that she'd heard.

She thought for a moment and he waited patiently for her answer, watching as she crossed her ankles and her arms, eyes narrowed and head held high.

"I thought, who does this handsome son of a bitch think he is telling people I'm not worth getting their suit wet for."

Bruce's grin widened and he shrugged his shoulders, hands out at his side, "I was wrong. You were worth ruining my suit over, you're worth ruining this jacket over and these shoes. I'd stand in the rain forever if it meant I could talk to you."

Carla scoffed and shook her head, disbelief at his bonafide words yet unable to deny the feeling of her heart racing inside her chest. He looked just as handsome as he'd done the day they'd met, rain soaking his hair that he slicked back with his hands and a toying smile on his lips, eyes dark and filled with mystery that even though she now knew him inside out, Carla still loved to be intrigued by.

"So you dragged me back here to tell me that? It would've been just as sickeningly romantic to hear you say it inside without water logging my Jimmy Choos," Carla shuddered at the feeling of her high heels growing damp.

Bruce smiled with a sigh. He'd happily been on his knees for Carla countless times but never had he thought he'd be down on one knee for any woman the way that he was about to be for her. With a belief that love didn't exist, he'd made peace with a lifetime of being alone and although part of him still longed for the solitude, that same part of him longed to share it with Carla and Carla alone.

She tested him, rivalled him and pushed him further than he thought he was capable of going. Carla challenged him in the most exciting ways, bent his mind and twisted his feelings enough for him to feel like a different man than he had been before she'd ever touched him. Bruce didn't want to go back to the way he was before, he didn't want the big empty estate and revolving door of supermodels and ballerinas, he wanted Carla. He wanted her wit and her intelligence, her hostility and her scalding warmth, her lips and her eyes and her soul, and he wanted it forever.

"Actually, I dragged you here for something else. But tell me that you forgive me before I say what it is."

Carla rolled her eyes, "Tell me what it is and then I'll decide whether you deserve my forgiveness or not."

Bruce pulled in a deep breath and nodded, something in the way that her eyes lifted at the edges with a gentle dust of sparkle telling him that Carla knew what he was about to do, and the fact that she didn't look the least bit scared assured him that what would come next was never really a decision, but fate.

"Carla, I-"

"Wallet, purse, keys, all of it."

Their heads snapped to the right when a set of loud footsteps and the cocking of a gun made their blood run cold, the interruption snatching the words from the end of Bruce's tongue and the breath from his lungs.

They couldn't see the man's face but that didn't matter, the assailant dressed in all black with a scarf around his neck and leather gloves covering his hands, the gun he held perfectly poised and steady, aiming right at Carla.

"Fine, it's yours. Why don't you lower the gun, hm?" Bruce said calmly, slowly edging over to Carla with a hand outstretched, sparing her a brief glance and braving a false smile, if only to try and reassure her, "Just give him your purse, it's alright."

When he looked into her eyes then, the composure from a split second before had gone and fear had taken over. There had been a time where staring down the barrel of a gun hadn't frightened Carla in the least, but it seemed like a lifetime had passed since she last felt that way and in that time, she had learned that even women like her had something to lose, and that was the most terrifying lesson of all.

She did as she was told, reluctantly tossing her bag towards the man's feet. He grabbed it with his spare hand and Bruce stood in front of Carla, a hand over her body that he felt her suddenly cling to. Her fingers grabbed his wrist while her other hand locked around his arm, his touch giving her a reassuring squeeze at her waist as she took her turn to hold her breath.

"The car is right there," Bruce pointed behind him, lacing his fingers through Carla's as he used his other hand to reach into his pocket, "Here are the keys and my wallet. It doesn't have to end-"

Carla's world moved in broken time as she felt Bruce's hand let go of her own. A scream from somebody behind her struck terror into the eyes of the stranger who dropped the gun and lunged for the scattering of Bruce's belongings on the ground, only Carla reached forward too.

She grabbed the gun and with cold, calculatingly steady hands fired two shots into his knee caps, axing him down onto the soaking ground as he howled in agony, writhing with his legs pulled up to his chest as the rain hammered down.

"Somebody call an ambulance!"

The words didn't come from Carla's lips, the order shouted by somebody else. She immediately shrugged off her jacket and dropped to her knees as Bruce slumped backwards against the brick wall, panting for the respite of a laboured breath that came with a sharp pain that burned more by the second.

"It's alright, you're okay," Carla nodded, eyes wide as she balled up her blazer and pressed it to the bleeding wound on Bruce's chest.

"I'm sorry," he choked out, raising a weak hand and resting it on top of Carla's.

"You're fine, don't worry. Everything's going to be fine."

She didn't believe the words that she was saying but Carla didn't have any other choice. Her voice was broken and her eyes flooded with panicked tears, feeling herself not being able to breathe the more she watched Bruce struggle to keep his eyes open.

He pulled one of her hands from his chest across to the pocket of his jacket, "Open it," he whispered.

Carla's fingers were shaky as she dug around inside of his jacket, eventually pulling out a small velvet box that sent a surge of suffocating sadness into the back of her throat. She wearily opened the box and felt a shiver run down her spine when she saw the ring, eyes falling helplessly to Bruce's face.

He found the strength to smile, picking up the ring between his thumb and forefinger and holding it up in front of him. The rain continued to fall and a paralysing sensation started to seep across his body and infiltrate his tired mind, severing the nerves that hadn't already broken and flooding him with poison.

But still he breathed. He looked into Carla's beautiful eyes and winced in agony as he fought to lift his lungs enough to say just four more words, even if they were to be his last.

"Will you marry me?"

Carla sobbed a waterfall as her heart shattered all over again, nodding as she witnessed the light flickering behind Bruce's eyes and realised their time was cruelly running out.

"Yes, yes I'll marry you, Bruce."

He laughed with the sound of the rain and slid the ring onto her finger, grabbing hold of her hand and clutching it against his chest while she kept the pressure beneath her jacket.

Carla brushed raindrops from his face with her fingertips before leaning down and placing a soft kiss on his lips. Bruce kissed her back, feeling his eyes shed tears down his cheeks as he tried to tighten his grip around her hand, scared to feel the cold hit his skin if she let go, even though he was sure she wouldn't.

The severity of the situation couldn't cut its way inside of Carla's mind, her shields instantly rising to protect herself from the pain though she willed herself to feel it all if it would mean Bruce felt nothing. Carla knew what was happening, she could see his skin growing whiter and the grip of his hand getting weaker but she couldn't accept it, she refused to accept it.

Gotham couldn't take somebody else from her, it couldn't take someone it had already taken. Carla loved Bruce with every ray of light that made up her soul and every twist of darkness that bound her bones together. She loved his temper and his charm, his kind heart and his playful nature, his eyes and his lips and his soul, and she wanted him forever.

Though it seemed like their forever was to be cut short, and as much as Carla wanted to believe that she deserved something good in her life to last, she had been wrong. Perhaps she had been condemned from the very beginning, from the day she selfishly asked her parents for a bike for her birthday that ended up with her mother dead on their doorstep. Her bad luck had followed her like a looming shadow, snatching the things she clung to with all her might and ripping them away with claw marks so deep part of her was taken with them.

Bruce had given her something good, something real and something pure. He'd given her hope and a reason to believe that there was a life to be lived where things weren't so dark, and Carla had given that to him, too. But perhaps people that had lost so much could only ever lose, maybe they wouldn't have known how to treasure something so precious and nurture its fire to burn infinitely, though Carla and Bruce would've given anything for the chance to try.

They were reckless and hopeless yet filled with order and desire all at the same time, but that was the way Bruce and Carla had always been. Their love wasn't conventional but neither were they, and maybe that was why their ending came without the picket-fenced life that their friends were dealt, without the peace and quiet of suburbia, photo albums and graduations.

"Carla...Carla, I..."

"I wish you didn't have to play hero this time," she shook her head as tears stained her cheeks, fingers caressing every sharp detail of his perfect face.

Bruce's lips curved into a breathless smile as his head rest against the wall, "I only play the hero for my obnoxious attractive girl."

He mumbled with heavy breaths and spluttered coughs, hazel eyes fluttering open and closed with seconds in between, each glimpse shorter and shorter that twisted the knife deeper into Carla's heart.

"Don't do this to me Bruce," she cried, holding his face with a gentle thumb brushing across his cheek, "Please, please don't. I love you. Please, Bruce, stay."

He swallowed hard and held her hand that remained pressing down on his chest, no longer feeling any pain. Bruce wasn't afraid to die, he never had been, but he was afraid of being somewhere, being anywhere without Carla by his side, and as he used his last dregs of energy to keep his eyes locked onto hers, he saw just how scared she was to be anywhere without him, too.

"I'm sorry. I know you love me, I can feel it, it's all I can feel. I love you too, angel. I'm so sorry."

Sirens melted into the city sounds and so Carla didn't realise that an ambulance had arrived until she was torn away from Bruce by a pair of hands dragging her shoulders backwards. She stumbled but was caught in safe arms, choking over her own tears as she kept her eyes on Bruce, holding onto him in the only way that she could until he let go.

"Doctor Fiori? What the hell happened? Are you hurt?"

Jim Gordon held her at arms length with a feverish gaze scanning her body for injuries. She wasn't bleeding but by God she was hurt, and the pain felt as if she was dying over and over again as she stood in the rain, each drop of water another blade piercing her skin and going straight for her heart.

He took off his jacket and hung it over her shoulders, filled with burning worry about her as she simply looked past him like he wasn't even there. It was only when Jim turned around that his heart dropped to the soles of his feet.

"Is-is that..."

Carla nodded, looking down at the beautiful ring on her finger and feeling the last flame of hope she held for something brighter die out.

"Yes," she whispered, "It's Bruce."