Ikaris doesn’t like her. That’s the simple version. The clean version.

He hates her.

He hates the way she moves through the air like she owns it, the way the ground hums when she walks, the faint crackle of cosmic energy that trails behind her like starlight and arrogance combined. He hates that she’s more powerful than him—him, the weapon of the gods, the Eternal who once carved through Deviants and men alike without breaking a sweat.

He hates that she makes him feel small.

It’s a peculiar kind of rage, the kind that itches under the skin and has nowhere to go. The kind that hums through his chest when he watches her fight, or when she looks at him like he’s a relic from a civilization that already forgot him.

And she does look at him like that, eyes sharp, cold, distant. Makkari and Druig made sure of it, whispering the old stories, the betrayal, the failure. To her, he’s not Ikaris. He’s the monster who followed a broken god’s orders.

He’s the reminder that not all heroes stay clean.

So she keeps her distance. Keeps her tone clipped, her answers short. She talks to everyone else like they matter; to him, only when she must. And when she does, oh, she doesn’t hold back. Every word is a blade, perfectly aimed, perfectly cutting.

But she’s also stronger. That’s the worst part.

He’d seen her take down a fleet on her own once, barely flinched, not even a scratch. He’d felt the tremor in the ground when she landed, the cosmic flare that split the clouds open. He’d seen gods burn, but he’d never seen power like hers. It made something inside him tighten. Something that felt like awe, and tasted like fury.

She was chaos incarnate. And Ikaris hated chaos.

He kept his distance, until that day.

The mission had gone to hell long before they’d arrived. Some rogue faction in the ruins of São Paulo, a pocket of soldiers enhanced with tech that shouldn’t exist. They weren’t human anymore. Not really. But they screamed like humans when they died.

He remembers the smell first. Metal. Smoke. Blood.

She was standing in the center of it all, surrounded by the wreckage of what used to be people. Power still crackling off her in bright, terrible waves. The air shimmered around her, vibrating with heat and raw energy. Her face was unreadable, expression carved from something harder than stone.

The walls dripped red. The ground steamed.

For a moment, she looked less like a hero and more like him. And it did something to him.

He landed beside her, boots crunching over the blackened floor. She didn’t look at him. Didn’t say a word. Just stood there, chest rising and falling, the faint tremor of spent power running through her hands.

“You call this justice?” he said finally. His voice was low, smooth, cruel on purpose. “Or was it just fun?”

“They were already dying,” he stepped closer. “You made sure of it.”

“Don’t,” she said sharply. “Don’t start with me, Ikaris.”

But he’s already there, close enough to see the tiny streaks of soot across her cheek, the faint shimmer of tears she refuses to let fall. Close enough to see that she’s shaken, no matter how much she tries to hide it.

He almost—almost—feels sorry for her.

But then his mouth twists into that familiar smirk, the one meant to wound. “The mighty cosmic savior, drowning in her own carnage. How poetic.”

She turns to him then, eyes blazing, brighter than any sun he’s ever seen. “You think you’re better than me?”

“I know I am,” he says. “Because I learned to control it. To stop before the blood reached my hands.”

It’s a lie, and they both know it. The air between them crackles with it.

He takes another step, lowering his voice until it’s almost a whisper as his hand came up to grab her face. Fingers digging into her cheeks. “You want to know the difference between us? You enjoyed it. You pretend you didn’t, but I saw your face. You liked the way they screamed.”