My hand moves before I decide to let it. I brush a thumb once, lightly, over the edge of her hairline, careful not to touch the bruise.
Her lashes flutter. Then her eyes open.
For a second she looks confused. Drugged with sleep. Then she focuses on me, and everything about her expression changes.
“Hey,” she says, voice soft.
“Hey.”
She watches me for a moment. Then, quieter, “You stayed.”
The words land wrong in my chest. Of course I stayed.
I pull the chair closer and sit. “You were attacked.”
“Yes,” she says dryly. “I noticed.”
That gets the smallest exhale out of me. Not a laugh. Close enough to count.
She studies my face and must see too much there, because her expression shifts. “Aleksei.”
“What.”
“Thank you.”
I look at her. “For what?”
“For saving me.” The simplicity of it nearly undoes me more than the blood did.
I shake my head once. “I should have been there before he touched you.”
Her brow pulls together slightly. “That’s not how reality works.”
“It should.”
“No,” she says softly. “It shouldn’t.”
Silence settles for a beat.
She looks tired. Pale. But steadier now. More awake. Her hand drifts over her stomach again without thinking, and my eyes follow the motion before I can stop them.
I have been trying not to think about the obvious since I saw her through that restaurant window. Since I stood outside like a man hit by his own life.
Pregnant. Almost eight months.
The math is there.
I should ask directly. Demand truth. Demand timelines. Demand whatever right a man in my position thinks he has over a question like that.
Instead, what comes out is quieter.
“How long were you planning to keep this from me?”
Her face changes instantly. She looks away first, toward the monitor, the window, anything but me. “There isn’t anything to keep from you.”
I sit back in the chair, suddenly colder. “Zatanna.”
She closes her eyes for one second. Then opens them and meets mine. “The baby isn’t yours.”
