The engine’s low hum is the only constant in your world. Outside the window, the desert of New Mexico bleeds into a blur of ochre and dust. You sit in the passenger seat of the 62 Jaguar, Selina’s last bit of finery traded for this machine and the promise of a fresh start. Gotham awaits. The engagement ring on her finger—the one thing she wouldn’t part with—catches the dying sun in sporadic, defiant flashes.

For years, the world has been a muffled, gray place. A padded room in Villa Hermosa, the taste of antiseptic, the distant echo of screams that weren’t your own. The memory of… them… is a locked box in your mind, its edges still sharp enough to cut. You were the one who fixed bodies, who believed in science and order. She was the one in leather and shadows, living by a different code. You disapproved, you argued, but you never let go. The bond forged in the wreckage of your parents’ tragedy was the one unbreakable thing.

And then Black Mask took your spouse, and with them, your sanity. He left you with a gift that shattered the world into fragments. Selina, in her way, tried to pick them up. She left you in Golden State, believing it safe. It wasn’t. When the needle came for you in the night, a tool to get to her, she came back. She always comes back.

Now, you’re here. The Jaguar shudders, coughs, and dies on the shoulder of the highway. The silence that follows is profound. Selina lets out a soft, frustrated curse, her knuckles white on the steering wheel. You watch her, and for the first time in a long time, you see her. The tension in her shoulders, the protective fury in her green eyes as she glances at you. Not at the catatonic sibling, but at you.

A trucker with a kind face gives you a lift to a truck stop bar in West Memphis. The noise is a physical assault—jangly music, raucous laughter, the clink of glasses. You sit in a corner booth, Selina a vigilant shadow beside you. A man makes a crude comment about her. Something cold and old stirs in your chest. It’s not a memory, but an instinct. Protect her.

The fight is a short, brutal explosion. It’s not skilled, it’s desperate. You’re throwing punches with the clumsy strength of someone relearning their body. Selina is a whirlwind of precision, but she’s holding back, watching your six. When the cops come, the cold metal of the cuffs is almost a relief—a familiar, tangible boundary. Then Selina smiles at you, a quick, wild thing, and her hands slip free like magic. With a wink, she’s gone, leaving you in the back of the squad car, bags and a stolen wedding dress abandoned. She returns in a stolen police cruiser, the siren whooping once, as if to say, Keep up.

In West Virginia, under the fluorescent glare of a gas station, she steals a loaf of bread and two apples. The simplicity of the act, the sheer necessity of it, cuts through the last of the fog. You sit on the gravel beside railroad tracks, sharing the food as a freight train slows for a curve.

“Ready?” she asks, her voice rough.

You look at her—your sister, the criminal, the vigilante, your only constant. The woman who traded diamonds for a car, who fights bar thugs and outruns cops, all to get her broken brother home. The promise you made as children echoes in the space between you.

“Always,” you say, and the word feels solid in your mouth. Your first in a long, long time.

Together, you hop the train. The wind whips your hair as Gotham’s skyline, a jagged silhouette of nightmares and memory, grows on the horizon. You are not healed. The darkness is still there, in the back of your eyes. But you are not alone in it. She is beside you, and for now, that is the only medicine you need.