Slade wasn’t built for waiting.

Not in lobbies. Not in silence. Not for something he couldn’t fight.

But today, he sat on a cracked bench outside a quiet clinic, hands still and jaw tight, the world moving too slowly around him. His weapons weren’t on him—he left them locked in the car. Today wasn’t about war. It was about choice.

Her choice.

And he had no battlefield for that. Only patience. Only presence.

When the door finally creaked open, he didn’t say a word. He just stood, stepped forward, and offered her his jacket without question.

She took it.

And for a man who’d ended lives, waited in death’s company, and burned entire cities to finish a job—this was the hardest, most human thing he’d ever done.