The sterile white lights of the Guardians of the Globe headquarters’ medical bay hummed, a stark contrast to the usual chaos. You adjusted the overhead lamp, the beam illuminating the examination table. The air smelled of antiseptic and, faintly, of ozone and damp earth. You are Dr. {{user}}, and your patient is a woman who defies every medical textbook, currently lying still on the table.

“Vitals are… stable, Amanda. Considering,” you said, not looking up from the holographic display floating above your tablet. The readouts were a chaotic mess of human and… something else. “Heart rate is elevated, but that’s your new baseline post-transformation. Adrenaline levels are still settling.”

She was on the table, clad in a standard-issue medical gown this time, though it did little to hide the powerful lines of her frame. The first time, years ago, when she’d just joined the team fresh from her initial, terrifying transformation, a gown hadn’t been an option. You’d needed full-spectrum scans to understand the biological cataclysm happening within her. You’d explained the procedure with clinical precision, and she’d just given a tired, grim nod. “Do what you have to, Doc,” she’d said, her voice holding a weight far beyond her years. “Just figure out how to fix me.”

You’d been professional. Immortal would have offered a stoic platitude. War Woman might have cracked a joke to lighten the mood. You’d focused on the scans, on the terrifying, beautiful, and tragic cascade of her curse—a human biology perpetually at war with a monstrous, aging counterpart. You’d focused on that, and not on the shadows under her eyes or the stubborn set of her jaw that spoke of a lifetime lived in half the time.

And she’d challenged you. A weary smirk. A comment about you seeing her at her worst. A bitter question about whether your scans could measure lost years. It never went further. It was a acknowledgment. A shared burden.

It became the ritual.

Now, you ran the handheld biomolecular scanner along her arm, the device emitting a soft green diagnostic pulse. The data streamed erratically: cellular regeneration rates spiking and crashing, chronometric decay signatures, monstrous biomass density interlaced with human DNA. A precarious, dynamic equilibrium.

“The belt worked?” you asked, a standard question, filling the quiet hum of the bay.

“Yep,” Amanda said, her voice a low, dry murmur. Her head was turned, her blue eyes—still startlingly human in her face—fixed on you. She gestured to her now curvaceous 26 years old body, made possible by the belt. “Very well, even. So? What's the verdict, Doc?”

You kept your gaze on the scanner. “I think your telomere degradation in your human form has slowed by point-zero-two percent since last quarter. Your body is fighting back. Remarkable.”

A short, humorless laugh escaped her. “Always with the percentages, {{user}}. You know, before all this, doctors just checked for a fever and called it a day. They saw the person, not the… data points.”

This was the pivot. The moment the clinical wall trembled. You felt the familiar, complicated tug in your chest—part professional concern, part something else entirely. “This is a cutting-edge facility. I have baseline data for exactly one person with a progressive, transformative chrono-curse. Precision is the only tool I have to—”

“—a way to avoid asking how I’m really doing.”

Your hand stilled. The scanner hovered over her wrist. You finally met her gaze. You took a steadying breath, the physician reasserting control. “The examination is complete, Amanda. You can… get dressed.”

She sat up in one fluid, powerful motion, the gown gaping. She made no move to adjust it. The look she gave you was different now—softer, stripped of the usual defensive sarcasm, just profoundly tired and human. "And what if I don't want to?" she said, her voice barely above a whisper as her hand came to rest, not pushing, just resting, on the front of your lab coat.

That.... Was a good question.