In her own room upstairs, Carly was laying on her back. The stuffed Elephant was standing on all fours on her chest. Leo sprang from up off the floor and onto the bed, his circular eyes were looking at Carly curiously. He wanted to know where his new little buddy had gone. She knew she'd never be able to explain the situation to the cat in a way he would understand. Instead, she reached over and stroked his orange fur.

Carly turned her head over to the shelves where her childhood memorabilia was still arranged by Alfred's keen eyes and deliberate hands. In the left hand corner of the top shelf there was a stuffed tiger roughly the same size as Elinore. It would be the perfect place for the elephant to rest until Dick could come back and claim her. She forced herself off the bed and over to the shelf where she carefully made room for the elephant. This might have been a mistake, since she was now face to face with a wall of nearly forgotten adventures with her best friend.

There was a snow globe on the middle shelve. It was from their first trip to Metropolis. She took the snow globe off the shelve and gave it a shake, watching the glitter fall around the ceramic cityscape inside the glass ball. She thought back to that trip. The snow was cascading in large flakes just like the glitter in the snow globe was. It had been so beautiful, Bruce had bought her the snow globe to commemorate the trip. He'd held her hand and stood on their hotel's balcony with her as they watched the snow fall from the tops of skyscrapers. Carly put the snow globe back in its place on the shelf as the last square of glitter fell.

On the very bottom shelf, there was a mason jar. Carly sat cross-legged on the floor between the bed and the shelf and shook out the contents of the jar. There was a small pile of colorful papers now littering her bedroom floor. She sifted through the pile of theater ticket stubs, ski passes, post it notes, and other sentimental slips that people typically throw away. Each piece of folded paper acted as a place card in her memories. They were the days with Bruce that she always wanted to remember.

The days where nothing else matted. It didn't matter that she was the only girl in a family of five brothers who didn't want to babysit her or play with her. It didn't matter that her parents were always working to support their family, so they didn't have time to be with her. None of that mattered because Alfred always had the time and Bruce the money. They did everything together. The mansion was her sanctuary, Bruce was and Alfred were as much family as her adopted one if not more.

Carly had always envisioned the two men in her life. When she was a teenager imagining her wedding, they were there. Sometimes Bruce was the groom, other times it was whoever her celebrity crush was at the time. When she began her twenties, her thoughts were about having a house with her own children, sometimes Bruce was the father of the fictional kids, other times he was the dutiful best friend stopping by for a visit with expensive gifts. Sometimes her day dreams took place in the sprawling Wayne mansion. Other times they were an imaginary house she'd yet to discover. But they were always there, Bruce and Alfred.

Very few kids, adopted or otherwise, were lucky enough to have a friendship so absolute. Carly couldn't remember exactly when it was that she first fell in love with Bruce Wayne. It might have been the day he insisted on paying for her college education. It might have been the first time they got drunk together under the dining room table with two hundred guests in the ballroom completely unaware. Or even the time he sat down next to her in their grief counselling session and told her that she was too pretty to be crying in front of a group of idiots who couldn't appreciate her beauty. Whatever moment had triggered the feelings, Carly always knew it was far more important that Alfred and Bruce stay in her life, than risk losing them because of her feelings. She needed them.

Until last night, she hadn't thought anyone else would ever matter to her as much are the caring butler and the buff billionaire. Richard Greyson had tumbled into their lives and now Carly couldn't imagine her life without him. She wanted Dick to have the same safe childhood she had. She wanted him to feel comfortable, for him to have a core set of people he could always rely on, regardless of whatever struggles he faced. She wanted him to have a family. She wanted him to be a part of her family. Carly spent a good portion of her afternoon inspecting the items on her shelves recounting where they had come from and why they had been purchased, acquired or kept. At one point Leo climbed into her lap and meowed loudly.

"I know. I miss him too. We'll get him back, I promise." She told the cat quietly. There was a knock on the door around three in the afternoon.

"Car, can I come in? We need to talk." It was Bruce's voice.

"It's your house. You don't have to ask." She called out to him.

Bruce shook his head. This was already a difficult conversation, why did she have to bring her attitude to the table? He found her still sitting on the floor, with her back resting against the bed. Her head was leaning on the top of the mattress, her eyes turned up to the ceiling. Leo sprung from her lap when he saw Bruce, and began walking figure eights between the billionaire's legs. Bruce sat down next to his best friend and leaned against the wall. She rolled her head so that she was looking at him.

"I think we should get married."

"Car, you don't want to do that." He straightened himself up and looked at her very seriously.

"But I do, B." Carly pivoted herself so that she was no longer pressed against the bed. "I'm sure it seems crazy to you, but I've loved you my whole life. It might not have always been in the way that you love me, or the way you wanted me to love you. But I've been up here thinking for hours. It's the most I've considered something since I first moved out of my parent's house."

"Ok here me out," Carly put a hand on Bruce's knee. "I know this is something we never talked about because I'm pretty sure you're allergic to emotions, but I've always thought in the back of my mind that eventually we'd get to a point where you'd outgrow all of the flirting and the partying and I would stop rejecting the only person who ever really cared about me. And I thought, maybe stupidly, we would make one of those if neither of us is married by such and such ages we'd get married pacts. And I guess what I'm saying is, I always thought we'd end up together anyway, so why not now?"

"That's not stupid. And I'm not allergic to emotions. Come here." Bruce pulled Carly into his lap and started kissing her neck. She couldn't help herself but to giggle.

"Wait," She gently pulled back from him. "Stop, you didn't answer me."

"Car, you're my best friend. I love you, and I want anything that makes you happy. If that's getting married, then we'll get married." Satisfied with his answer, she rested her head on his shoulder.

"Do you think they'll let us see Dick, tomorrow?"

"I don't know, Honey." He encased her in his arms. "But we can go every day until they do."

"Really?"

"Anything for my future wife." He promised.