The end, when it finally comes, feel inevitable, but it still takes her by surprise.
They've been living in La Havre for three months when the manila envelope arrives, addressed in neat block letters to Petre Thierry, the name on the passport they'd bought for Bruce in Calais a year ago, soon after they'd left Gotham. She hands it to him and he opens it, pulling out a sheet of paper, scrawled in the same hand. She doesn't recognize individual words or even letters; it seems to just be gibberish.
"Who's it from," she asks.
He examines the envelope for a moment. "Doesn't say. Probably just a prank," he says. He reaches for her, and she goes easily into his arms, determined to ignore the evasion.
Later, she thinks that this is the beginning of the end. But perhaps that came before, when she lied about the reason they should move to Le Hevre. The thing about Bruce is that he's lived such a charmed life that he still finds poverty amusing. He doesn't understand the despair, the soul-crushing fear and leeching worry that preys on her mind. She tried to tell him about how she grew up, about how much she can't go back to that, but he just smiles and says, "It will be fine. We have each other."
As if that's enough.
And so she takes matters into her own hands. She doesn't go for the big scores anymore. She's careful. She deals only in small merchandise, moving through mid-level dealers and bringing in sums that could be explained away by generous tips and Christmas bonuses. She suspects he knows, but he either doesn't want to confront her, or he doesn't care.
A small, mean part of her hates him for that.
She goes out that evening, and when she returns, he has laid the letter out on the table and is laboring over it with pen in hand. She watches him for a few moments before turning away and going to bed.
She does the job she can to La Havre to do, and then has to travel to London to deliver the tiara to a buyer. She stays for two days and when she returns, Bruce is still sitting at the table. He looks rumpled and pale. He clearly hasn't slept. He looks up with bleary eyes and she suddenly realizes that she never said goodbye to him, never kissed him or even told him where she was going.
She wonders if he's noticed.
"What's wrong?"
He hands her the letter wordlessly.
It was a cipher. The jumble of symbols are written out, a key below it and then, below that, the deciphered message.
I know you're out there, Bruce. Come back and play. We're still destined to do this forever. XOXO. J.
"The Joker?"
He nods.
"How?"
She wasn't in Gotham during Joker's short but destructive reign there. But she's heard stories. Not from Bruce, of course. He never talks about that, but she knows that he is dangerous, and she feels a small shiver of fear at the thought that he knows so much about the life they've made together.
"Does it matter?" he asks.
He looks grim, and grimly determined. She knows what he will say before he even says it.
"I have to go back."
She sets the paper down carefully beside his empty coffee cup and sits down in the rickety wooden chair beside him.
"You don't," she said. "It's John's city now."
"John's never faced him."
"John never faced Jonathan Crane or Jervis Tetch, but he did just fine against them."
"You don't understand," he says. His voice is low and tight, with a bit of the Batman gravel in it. Despair pricks, sharp and painful, in her chest. "The Joker's different."
"There's always going to be someone," she says. "I thought you were through looking for reasons to fight. So what is this really about?"
"I told you," he sits back tiredly, rubs his hands over his face. He won't look at her. "It's about the Joker."
"No," she says flatly. "This is about you. If you're bored, or tired of living like a pauper, or…"
"Selina." He reaches for her and she pulls away, suddenly brittle with anger. His hand drops away.
He looks at her then and she sees it—the ghost she's spent that past year trying to exorcise. Only she was wrong.
It was never Rachel at all.
"If you go," she says softly, each word ripped from her like a stillborn child, "If you want to go back to Gotham and be a hero again, I'm not going with you."
He pauses, seems to really think about it and she has a sudden, wild hope that it will be enough. That she will be enough. And then he nods, and stands and walks into the other room.