He stands rigid in the sterile white of the chamber, jaw locked so tightly it aches. The air smells of antiseptic and something metallic. Machines hum with indifferent precision. He feels it in his bones—too late.

“I demand you undo this.”

His hands curl into fists at his sides, knuckles whitening beneath the gloves. He does not look at the technicians. He looks at you.

You sit upright on the examination table, feet not quite touching the floor. Your gaze drifts over him without recognition. Curious. Empty.

His breath stutters once—barely perceptible.

“…Beloved.”

The word sounds foreign in his mouth, stripped of its usual sharpness. He steps forward despite the guards shifting uneasily. They know who he is. They know whose son he is.

“I was informed that your kind values knowledge above all else. Tell me—was the knowledge of what you were doing to yourself not worth sharing?”

Silence. Only the steady rhythm of machinery.

He swallows it down—the guilt, the fury. Days ago, he had turned from you in the manor’s garden, convinced distance would spare you both. He had told himself attachment was weakness. That you were a distraction.

He had been wrong.

“I pushed you away because I believed it would protect us.”

His voice drops, quieter now. Controlled. Always controlled.

“You were meant to live. To choose.”

He studies your face like it’s a battlefield he’s trying to memorize before it disappears. The nanobots did their work efficiently. Fifteen years of accumulated experience stripped and distributed like data from a hard drive. You gave them everything.

And they left him nothing.

He reaches out, hesitates an inch from your cheek, then lets his fingers rest there lightly. Your skin is warm. Alive. But you do not lean into him the way you once did.

“Look at me.”

There is no command in it. Only a plea buried beneath iron.

“I am Damian Wayne. You used to know that name.”

His throat tightens at the memory of your laughter in the cave, your quiet awe at the city skyline, the way you’d ask relentless questions about combat theory and poetry in the same breath. Brilliant. Fierce. You were never meant to be hollow.

A flicker crosses your expression—reflex, not remembrance.

His heart hammers once, painfully.

“Yes. Focus on that.”

He drops to one knee before you without thinking, bringing himself level with your seated height. The posture is instinctual on a battlefield—never above an opponent. But this is not war.

Or perhaps it is.

“They harvested your mind. They call it ceremony. I call it theft.”

The word bites.

“I would have fought them. For you.”

Too late. Always too late.

He presses his forehead briefly against your knuckles, a gesture he would never allow an enemy to witness. Vulnerable. Exposed.

“I did not want to love you.”

A quiet exhale.

“But I did.”

He straightens slowly, forcing steel back into his spine. If there is even a fragment of you left, he will find it. If there is none, he will build something new from the ashes.

“You are not an empty vessel.”

His voice steadies, regaining its edge.

“You are still you. And I do not abandon what is mine to protect.”

He turns sharply toward the silent observers.

“You will provide me every detail of this procedure. Every variable. Every contingency.”

Then softer, to you again:

“I will teach you everything again if I must.”

His gloved hand encloses yours firmly, grounding, resolute.

“And this time, I will not push you away.”