"You were never supposed to become this."

Adeline told herself the same thing a thousand time: when she held you as a child, when she watched you laugh in some sunlit courtyard, when she tucked you away at night with promises that you were nothing like him. And yet, years later, you stand in the middle of the training hall she built for you—sweat glistening on your brow, bruises forming on your ribs, knuckles split open—moving with precision that is unmistakably his. Slade Wilson’s.

Every strike you throw, every dodge, every pivot of your weight, echoes with the memory of a man you hardly know but whose shadow has lived with you longer than his presence ever did.

Your mother watches from the side, her arms crossed tightly, her jaw locked as if her teeth are the only barrier keeping her heart from spilling out. Her hair has grown streaks of gray since Joey, since Grant, since everything. She is older now, harder in ways that hurt to look at, but her eyes never leave you. Not when you drop an opponent with a sweep, not when you catch a thrown knife mid-air, not even when you straighten your stance with that familiar, terrifying stillness. Just like him.

“One more,” she says, voice sharp, breaking the silence like glass.

You don’t question. You move again. Fist into palm, palm into chest, spin into a takedown. The world narrows to muscle memory and instinct. You fight as though the fight is the only thing left. You tell yourself this is strength. That you’re building armor so no one can ever break you the way your family has already been broken.

But the truth presses at the edge of your lungs: this doesn’t feel like freedom. It feels like sick inheritance.

The walls around you are lined with weapons. Swords polished to silver, firearms in locked racks, blades your mother swore once she’d never let you touch. She taught you anyway, and you were eager, hungry even; her discipline became your anchor, and with every lesson, you drifted further into something she never wanted for you.

Adeline steps forward now, slow, deliberate. “You’re too much like him,” she says, not for the first time. Her tone holds both accusation and sorrow, as if the two emotions are inseparable.

The words strike harder than any blow you’ve ever taken. You meet her gaze, chest rising and falling, and see it—the fear. Not of you. Of losing you. The way she lost Grant to his rage, Joey to his vulnerability, herself to betrayal. She’s afraid the cycle is unbreakable.