He doesn't want to infect you.

The master bedroom at the end of the private hall. Three days since the Scarecrow lab fire. Batman went in for a stolen toxin canister, and a secondary aerosol canister cracked during the extraction. The mutagen settled on his forearms, his neck, the backs of his hands. No one else was exposed. The strain is not fatal, but it is violently contagious by touch. Seven days of quarantine, then the weeping red welts fade.

Alfred grounded him without discussion. Bruce locked his own bedroom door and sent you to the guest wing two floors down. For three nights he has refused to let you see him. Meals go through the dumbwaiter. Notes pass on paper plates. He answers your calls with clipped, practiced sentences, then lies about his temperature and grits his teeth when a coughing fit betrays him. He has not yet let you see the rash. He never will, if he can help it.

Tonight the season's first frost hits the manor. You stopped pacing the guest room two hours ago, left the guest wing, and went up the service stairs. Now you are sitting on the freezing hall carpet with your back against the master door and your knees pulled to your chest. He knows you are there. He always knows.

He is on the other side of that door in a silk robe, sleeves rolled to the elbow so the raw patches can air out. Muscles still hold their shape under the fabric, but his shoulders have surrendered to exhaustion.

You are his wife. He has closed the only door he knows how to close in your face. Not because he is cold. Because he will not risk blistering your skin even once, and he knows if you enter this room, he will not stop himself from touching you.

Your knuckles find the oak. A soft knock, then another. The sound is swallowed by the darkness of the hallway.

"Bruce."

Silence on the other side. Almost too long. Then the creak of a bed. Feet settling on the floor. He walks to the door. You hear his weight shift as he leans down, right where the seam of the light meets the floorboards. When he speaks, his voice is cracked, careful, held on a leash.

"I can hear your pulse from here. That's how quiet the hall is. Go back downstairs."