Bruce met Bane's gaze without flinching.
"She deserves someone who treats her as more than a weapon or a legacy," he said quietly but with a firmness that cut through the air like steel. "Someone who sees her. I won't fail her in that. She's my girl."
For a moment, silence settled between them. A silence with weight. A silence that meant something.
Bane nodded once. "Good."
But before the breath after that word could settle…
Bruce's expression shifted.
The world… darkened.
Instantly. Abruptly. Absolutely.
His senses snapped taut, instincts roaring in alarm as the living room dissolved into a vast, suffocating abyss. One blink, Sophie was gone. Not dead. Not teleported. Not erased.
Just... removed. Like someone had reached into reality and plucked her presence out, leaving an unnatural absence behind.
