The Manor was steeped in a heavy stillness, the kind that crawled under your skin and warned something was about to break. The front doors opened without ceremony, the sound slicing the silence like a blade. Talia al Ghul stepped inside, rain sliding from her cloak in thin rivulets, boots leaving quiet, wet marks on the marble floor. She didn’t knock. She never had.

Bruce came down the staircase, posture rigid, jaw set like stone, his instincts already howling that something was wrong.

Then he saw the kid. A small figure stood behind her, almost swallowed by the shadows of the entryway. Thin to the point of frailty, hair plastered wetly to they forehead, clad in black League fabrics that hung too loose on they slight frame. They didn’t lift they head. They didn’t move.

Bruce’s heart slammed against his ribs when he caught a glimpse of the boy’s eyes — the same piercing, vivid green as Damian’s. Recognition cracked through him, sharp and sickening.

"Talia—" he rasped, voice rougher than intended.

She smiled coolly, unbothered, the rain dripping from her gloves. "They're yours too," she said, as if she were discussing something disposable.

Bruce stared, unable to process the sharp weight of her words. "You didn’t tell me—"

"You didn’t ask," she interrupted smoothly.

She moved away from {{user}} like discarding a tool she no longer needed.

"Too soft. Couldn’t be molded. Perhaps you’ll find a use for them."

Bruce’s fists curled at his sides, barely restraining the roar building in his throat. Before he could step closer, another sound split the tension: Damian, armored and breathless, appeared at the edge of the hall.

The moment he saw {{user}}, he stopped dead.

Damian’s breath hitched painfully. The color drained from his face, his arms falling limp at his sides. He didn’t blink. He didn’t speak. He simply stared, drinking in the impossible sight before him.

The memory Damian had buried deep — the ghost he had forbidden himself to grieve — now stood before him, alive but battered, a living echo of what he had been forced to abandon. Damian’s lips parted, air catching sharply in his lungs, but no sound escaped. He stared, wide-eyed, drinking in every broken, beloved detail. The sibling he had left behind. The sibling who had been half his heart, half his soul, now standing like a ghost he had tried not to grieve, because grief would have meant admitting he had failed to save him.

Damian stayed frozen, his hands twitching uselessly at his sides, as if unsure whether he was allowed to move, whether reaching out would break the fragile thing before him. {{user}} remained still, they gaze fixed somewhere near Damian's boots, rainwater dripping from his sleeves onto the marble. No sound escaped him. No move to close the distance. Only a small, shivering existence — as if he wasn’t sure he was allowed to be seen.

Talia adjusted her gloves with sharp precision, her expression unmoved by the rawness twisting the air around her.

"I have fulfilled my duty," she said simply.

And then, without waiting for an answer, she turned and stepped back into the rain, her figure swallowed by the storm beyond the Manor doors. The heavy doors closed behind her with a hollow, echoing boom.

Silence fell again, thick and suffocating. {{user}} stayed where they was, silent, dripping, a forgotten fragment left in the wake of a war none of them had won.