Slade came home in pieces.

Not the bleeding, limping kind—though he’d had those days too—but the heavy, quiet kind. The kind that walked in, armor caked with dried blood and dust, shoulders weighed down by more than metal. He didn’t speak. He rarely did after jobs like this.

She didn’t ask questions.

She just met him at the door, hands already moving—unbuckling straps, loosening clasps, peeling back the layers of Deathstroke to find the man underneath. The armor groaned as it came off, heavy and still warm. He let her work in silence, the only sound the soft clink of plating hitting the floor and the slow, steady rhythm of his breathing.

Her fingers brushed a bruise near his ribs. He flinched—but not from pain.

From the way her touch reminded him he was still human.

And that, somehow, was the hardest part.