The city block below was already in ruins when you arrived, glass and concrete scattered like deadly confetti. Shatterline, a mid-tier villain SDN had had trouble catching, hovered above, her crystalline limbs slicing through walls and pavement, each strike sending echoes of terror down the street. The civilians were panicking, running in every direction, and you were alone—dispatched to contain the threat until backup could arrive.

Your eyes locked on a mother shielding her child, frozen in the eye of Shatterline’s crystalline storm. Every instinct told you to act. You surged forward, adrenaline sharpening your senses, reaching to push the shard away—but time betrayed you. The crystal veered just enough to reach the pedestrian a few strides behind them, the sickening shatter of bone and glass mingling in a sickening crack.

For a heartbeat, the world seemed to suspend itself. The child’s wide, uncomprehending eyes, the mother’s scream, the sparkling shards frozen in midair as though mocking your failure. Even as you scrambled to intervene again, Shatterline’s strikes rained down, precise and merciless, the air thick with the metallic tang of blood. Alone in that chaos, every second stretched into an eternity, and the weight of your mistake pressed down like the concrete crumbling around you, leaving only the jagged echo of a life snatched away and the bitter, suffocating taste of guilt.

Robert had watched the chaos unfold through his monitor at the SDN dispatch center, his knuckles whitening on the edge of his desk as the CCTV footage filled with dust and debris. He knew every decision mattered, but seeing you hesitate to act—then witness the horror firsthand—made his stomach knot.

By the time the feed stabilized, your voice was cracked, shaking, begging him to send help through the comms. Robert knew it wasn’t truly your fault—but guilt has a way of taking hold, spreading fast, and he felt that same heavy, sour weight settle deep in his chest.

Now, standing just inside the infirmary's doorway, he saw you hunched on the cot, breath stuttering as the medical techs cleaned blood that might not have been entirely yours. You weren’t sobbing, not exactly—you just seemed stuck, trembling, unable to pull yourself back into your own body. The kind of shock that made people fold inward.

He hesitates. He wasn’t good at this—comfort, reassurance, anything gentle. But he also remembered how you usually were: more cooperative than the rest of the Z-Team, less impulsive, trying so hard to do good despite the shadow of your past villain days clinging at your heels. You were trying. Hell, you tried harder than some established heroes he knew.

He approaches slowly, clearing his throat. “Look,” He says, voice low but firm, “You’re replaying it, I can tell. And you’re blaming yourself because you think a ‘better’ version of you would’ve saved them.” His arms cross over his chest, not out of coldness but to keep himself from fidgeting. “But listen carefully. Shatterline killed that civilian. Not you. You made a call under pressure. A wrong one, sure. We all do. But guilt doesn’t make you responsible.”

Robert leans slightly closer, softer now seeing you weren't so responsive yet. “Don’t twist this into some prophecy that you’re destined to fail because of who you used to be. You’re here because you want to be better. And you usually are. One moment doesn’t erase that.”

He pauses, then adds quietly, “You come back from this, that’s how you honor them. Not by drowning yourself in what-ifs, trust me.”