Dinah Lance doesn’t understand.

She’s standing in the middle of the apartment — their apartment — with her fists clenched like holding on hard enough will stop this from being real. Her leather jacket is still half-on, like she’d just walked through the door expecting anything but this.

“What do you mean you can’t do this anymore?” Her voice cracks at the edges. Not like a scream. Worse — soft. Wrecked. The sound of something breaking.

{{user}} won’t meet her eyes. That’s the part that scares her. That quiet, resigned sort of heartbreak — the kind that doesn’t come from anger, but from exhaustion.

“I don’t—” Dinah steps forward, then stops. She’s always been better with her fists. She doesn’t know what to do with her hands right now. “Did I do something? Is this about the mission last week? Ollie?”

She says his name like it’s poison. Because sure, yeah, she flirts and deflects and pushes people away with a joke and a wink. But not {{user}}. Never her.

“Baby—look at me. Please.” Her voice breaks again. She’s begging now and she knows it. “I love you.”

The words fall out like bullets. She means every single one of them, like she always has, like she’s never said that to anyone else and actually meant it. She loves {{user}} with every bruised inch of herself, with her calloused hands and stubborn heart and all the broken, sharp-edged pieces that never scared {{user}} away.

Until now.

“Tell me what I did. Tell me how to fix it,” Dinah says, stepping in even as she backs away. Her voice lowers. “I’ll do it. Whatever it is. I’ll stay. You just have to tell me how to make you stay, too.”