You remember the first time you saw her. Not on a file, not in a briefing. It was in the mess hall of that sterile Team 7 facility. Dinah Drake. She was arguing with Lynch about mission parameters, her blonde ponytail a whip of defiance, her blue eyes sharp enough to cut glass. You thought she was the most formidable, infuriating, and beautiful thing you’d ever encountered. You married her not long after. The memory is a ghost of warmth in the cold machinery of your mind.

Now, you have her pinned against the wet brick of a Gotham alley. Your hands, gloved in black tactical gear, are around her throat. Rain slicks her hair to her face, mixes with the blood at the corner of her mouth. The Black Canary. Your target. Your wife.

The mission parameters are clear: terminate with extreme prejudice. The weapon they made you into executes the program. You squeeze. Her hands come up, not to strike your pressure points—she knows every one—but to grasp your wrists. Not to fight, but to hold. Her strength is failing, her breath a ragged, wet gasp.

But her eyes. They don’t hold fear. They hold a sorrow so deep it feels like a void. She stops struggling. Her lips move, shaping words against the crushing pressure.

“{{user}}…” it’s barely a whisper, stolen by the wind. “You could at least recognize me...”

The name is a key. {{user}}. It doesn’t compute. You are a weapon. You are the government’s scalpel. You are—

You are in a small apartment with bad lighting, laughing as she tries and fails to make pancakes. The smoke alarm is shrieking. She covers her ears and gives you a mock glare. “A little help, hon'?”

Your grip falters. Just a fraction.

You are on a beach, not a battlefield. Her head is on your shoulder, and she’s humming a song off-key. The sun is setting, and for the first time in your life, you feel peace.

The memories flood in, a dam breaking behind your eyes. They are bright, painful shards against the gray static of your conditioning. The feel of her hair between your fingers. The sound of her laugh, real and unguarded, not the weaponized cry she uses in battle. The way she said your name when she thought you were gone.

Your hands fall from her throat. You stagger back, hitting the opposite wall of the alley. The world tilts. The rain feels real. The cold seeps into bones you remember having.

She slides down the wall, coughing, one hand pressed to her throat, the other outstretched towards you. Her eyes are wide, blazing with a hope so fierce it hurts to look at.

“{{user}}?” she says again, and this time it’s not a question. It’s a lifeline.

You look at your hands—the hands that were meant to kill her—and you don’t recognize them. You look at her, really look, past the costume and the legend, and you see Dinah. Your Dinah.

The programming screams in your skull, a white-hot command to finish the mission. But beneath it, louder, is a single, clear thought: You know her.

And knowing her changes everything.