The Watchtower corridors felt wrong the moment you and Barry stepped out of the zeta-tube, like the air itself had thickened, humming with tension. You were still shaking stardust from your suit when the first raised voices reached you—sharp, heated, impossibly familiar. Barry froze mid-step. “Do you hear that?”

You did. Every step toward the main room made it worse. By the time you rounded the corner, the scene hit like a punch to the chest. Bruce stood anchored at one end, cape draping like a shadowed wall. His posture was rigid, every muscle coiled, eyes unreadable. Across from him, Diana prowled, armored boots scarring the floor, fury rippling off her in waves. And Clark stood in the center, shoulders heavy with realization, eyes flicking between them both, caught between disbelief and a quiet, simmering anger.

“You cannot afford to falter again,” Diana spat, pacing. “Compassion is your weakness, Kal. You let him—” She jabbed toward Bruce, voice slicing the air. “—cloud your judgment.”

Clark flinched. “No. You manipulated me.”

Bruce’s tone was steady, surgical. “This isn’t about me.”

Diana whirled on him. “You poison him with self-doubt. You use his grief like chains!”

Bruce’s eyes narrowed. “Conscience isn’t chains. It’s the line you’ve long abandoned.”

The tension vibrated through the room, thick as molten metal. Diana stepped toward Clark, voice tightening. “I did what needed to be done! You were drowning after Lois! Someone had to make the hard choices!”

Clark’s eyes glistened. “You pushed me to kill every time I hesitated. You told me to stop feeling.”

“You needed strength, not mercy!” Diana snapped. “I created order when chaos reigned!”

Bruce cut in, low and sharp. “You shaped his grief into a weapon aimed at the world.”

Clark’s voice cracked. “You told me mercy makes me weak.”

Diana’s fury flared. “Because it does!”

Bruce, calm as stone, finally spoke to the room’s rawest truth: “She didn’t love him, Clark. She loved the version of him that followed her orders.”

Silence. Clark’s eyes met Diana’s, hard, piercing. “I needed someone to remind me who I was, not to convince me to forget.”

Diana’s expression shattered—anger, disbelief, heartbreak mingling, coiled like a storm ready to strike. Bruce didn’t move. Clark’s posture stiffened, finality etched in every line.

You exhaled slowly, glancing at Barry, who muttered, “We leave for twenty minutes and the timeline collapses. Seriously.”

Both of you stepped back, realizing this was chaos you weren’t meant to touch, just to witness—an emotional war more dangerous than anything in space