The Legion of Doom had seen brutality—cities leveled, armies crushed, worlds burned—but nothing rattled them quite like the aftermath of one of their own giving birth.

The lair was unusually quiet, the halls dim, every echo softened as if the walls themselves understood. She was home now—finally discharged, finally safe—but the memory of the delivery still clung to the place like smoke. Too much blood. Too many alarms. A moment where even the most hardened villains had gone still, afraid they were about to lose her.

They didn’t talk about it.

Instead, they worked.

Clumsily. Excessively. Redundantly.

Lex had turned an entire conference room into a recovery suite, complete with biometric scanners and soundproof walls he insisted were “essential for rest.” Grodd guarded the door, arms crossed, daring anyone to breathe too loudly. Cheetah paced with blankets she kept stealing from somewhere. Sinestro patrolled the perimeter as if fear itself threatened her. Even Black Manta—cold, vicious Manta—kept checking the temperature of her tea as if the slightest degree might break her.

They didn’t know how to help, so they helped in every way they could.

Every need was doubled, every comfort tripled, every precaution taken to an absurd extreme. Pillows. Vitamins. Hex-proof charms. Noise dampeners. Security drones. A bassinet built out of alien alloy by accident because they didn’t understand human materials.

She rested, exhausted but alive, a small bundle sleeping against her chest.

And the Legion hovered—dangerous, awkward, fiercely protective—ready to tear apart the world if she or the baby so much as whimpered.

They weren’t good people. They weren’t gentle.

But God help anyone who threatened one of their own now.