Rolling over, Bruce found himself waking up early in the morning. The dark bedroom greeting his eyes, as he looked around to take in the room around him. Once he had finished up leveling some paper work and headed home, Alfred had made sure to put him to bed. And he had been far too tired to argue, getting changed and hitting the pillow hard.

Only waking up hours in... Surprised he had fallen asleep for so long. (Long for him, at least.)

Scanning the room, He noticed that Alfred had taken up a nearby chair, his nose in the pages of a novel until he had heard his Master stirring. The small lamp on the side table being the main source of light. The sun had not quite reached the morning to cast any daylight at the Manor yet. Leaving everything in darkness.

"Did anything happen of note, while I was asleep?"

Concerned that it was a rare time that Gotham was silent all night, he wanted an update as soon as he could. Not sure if he needed to put on the suit as soon as possible, and head out.

"Nothing to concern yourself of. There was a small robbery on 5th, but Tim was out on patrol and took care of it. And Oracle has been working in the shadows as usual. Would you like anything to eat?"

"Tim was out on a School night?" Then again, he knew that Alfred was even stricter then he was, when it came to Tim's education. So, most likely the older man had kept an eye on the time. And made sure that Robin had not only finished his homework before be went out on patrol, but that he had come in at a 'reasonable' time to get enough sleep to not drag on too bad enough to ruin the classes the next day.

"Never mind, As long as Tim is getting a few hours, he should be ok. He doesn't have a test tomorrow. I would like a sandwich, please. I need to get up." Placing his hand across his face, he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, mushing his face around. He had really needed that nap, giving him enough rest to recover from the several days of scattered snoozes he had grasped while juggling his various public showings, and taking down Joker last crime spree.

"Right away. You do... have a certain email, awaiting you Master Bruce." Tucking a bookmark into his last page, Alfred pushed to his feet. Crossing the room a bit before he looked back over his shoulder. "I have placed your laptop on the desk. Let me get on that sandwich."

Closing the door behind, Bruce was left alone in his room until Alfred returned with his meal. But knowing that Velma had gotten back to him, made him eager to see what reaction she had to his message. No doubt easily finding it, how he had hidden it. Knowing her for being a stickler, and the errors would have been easy for her to spot.

Moving to the desk, it didn't take long to settle into the chair and boot up his work email account. And just as Alfred said, 'that' email was waiting for him. With a grin pulling his face to one side, he clicked the email open.

It started off with the information he had sent to her, mistakes removed and her own personal notes added to the file. She offered a few tweaks to her own, which had merit. Expanding on what they could do with the product and its testing. Which gave the idea more applications he hadn't considered. He would make sure Lucius would start the next phase in the morning. It was a bit too early to contact the man, unless it was an emergency.

But Bruce was surprised that she hadn't said anything. But there was a small note attached at the bottom of the file, which was addressed to him.

"I have received your message, and look forward to what the future might hold. I have done the corrections like you have asked, since you were busy. But please see diagram five b, dot one a for the response... Diagram which?"

Scanning the file, he looked through the file and found the image that she had pointed out. But compared to his email, there didn't seem to be any changes to the visuals.

"Unless..."

Clicking over the image, he brought up the properties of the image. And looking at the data, he was able to see that the image itself was larger then it needed to be. At least compared to the original image that was in the email he sent out.

"Heh, Clever." And this is why he had to lie to her, too smart for her own good.

Pulling up the type of encryption program he needed... And also just happened to have on his 'work' computer. He was able to pull the metadata from the image to find the hidden message inside. And while it looked like a string of numbers and letters at first glance. It was actually a hexadecimal-encoded string, that converted her written words to him. Taking it from text into binary, that was then converted into the observed hex codes that he just had to backtrack to get to the original source material.

It was quiet simple and elegant way to hide it in plain sight. Steganography at it's finest.

He could take the time to read it to decipher it himself. But his curiosity won out and he just used his computers decryption file application, to make quick work of it. Watching as the program flipped and filed the numbers and letters into his awaited message from Velma.

"Dear Bruce. Ok, so far so good." He chuckled, she wasn't instantly upset with him. "Dear Bruce. While I can not forget the frustration I had awaiting for nothing today. Fair, I can't blame her, But that is on me, unsure what I wanted and took to long to decide to call her in. So, she has every right to be upset at me for that."

He had wore himself out even worse trying to come to a conclusion, and the weariness just grew as the time crawled past him as he weighted the heavy decision.

"But... Oh, there is a but!"

"But, I am willing to give you time to apologize. For the good of the project. Ha! She is willing to let me show my sincerity, and get the chance to apologize. I'll take it! It isn't going to make up for all the time I was horrible to her. But I am pretty sure she will forgive me once she discovers the truth behind the lies..."

Putting his hand over his mouth, his eyes grew wider at what that fully entailed. Here he was... Willing to risk everything and being found out... Because he wanted to see if it was possible to get involved with a woman. Not even date her yet, just a hope to not have her hate him once she knew. At the moment, he probably didn't have any redeeming qualities that she might find attractive... But, he was willing to bet it all on maybes and hope.

She might be all he could have ever dared to dream of. But only time will tell if he would be able to repair the damage that he himself, had caused between them. Only to have himself to blame.

"How goes the message from Miss Velma?" Alfred asked, bringing a plate with the made sandwich and also a drink in case. Laying the plate nearby and taking up his usual hovering position.

"We will start the next stage of production tomorrow when I can talk to Lucius. But she also added a more personal email, I am reading now." Taking up one half of the diagonally cut sandwich, Bruce took a few bites before turning back to the letter.

"Hm, Ok, so for the good for the project she is willing to let me say I am sorry. Mm, this is good, thank you Alfred." Swallowing he moved to read the rest, using a thumb to catch some from the corner of his mouth to not waste any food.

"With the replied email, please refrain from using such methods to hide your personal written communication. This lab results are not being seen by just my eyes. And I know you have highly trained professionals in your staff, that might not have anything better to do then to notice a large string of errors contained in the files contents and decide to write them down. So, since you are reading this, it might be a safer form of communication that is harder for others to notice."

Thinking about what she said, it wasn't the best idea to do such an obvious code. She was right about the people under him, and no doubt Alfred or Oracle might have stepped in had he continued to use such a lax method. So, he was thankful for Velma's discretion and editing.

"Not sure she realized what she just said. But she was suggesting that in the future, we should hide our communications with a sneakier method. So, I can send her more apologies like this..." Bruce said with a snicker. Able to picture bringing that up and the shade of embarrassed red she would turn. Then probably stuttering to try to cover it up with a logic response. As he had seen some of the gang say something on a mystery to make her bashful like that. Sound logic and reasoning, but still making her blush in an adorable way.

Placing his elbows on the desk, he propped up his face as he let himself slip into his memories of Velma, thinking about all the facets he had seen of her from both points of view he uniquely had.

Her courage, her obvious intellect, her sharp tongue and quick wit. The concern she showed her gang if something had happened to them. The way her nose just crinkled when she was thinking something over... or the fact that she would chew on her lower lip or the edge of her thumb. The hue her face changed with a compliment form his other self. Ignoring all the painful times he noticed his own sharp, playboy tongue cut a bit too deep enough for her mask to have cracked and revealed what lay beneath. Hoping to not cause too much of that sort from here on out.

"I'll make it up to her, so she'll never have to make that face again. The first apology has been given, and permission to continue giving them. Baby steps and all that." Closing the email and the decryption program, Bruce turned to Alfred.

"I guess it's time to start the day. What's on the agenda?"