The mission had been routine.
Get in.
Steal the prototype.
Get out before the Justice League realized the Legion of Doom had ever been there.
Simple.
Until Batman arrived.
The fight lasted less than four minutes.
Precise.
Efficient.
Controlled.
Just as Batman intended.
One batarang changed everything.
It hadn’t been aimed to kill.
It wasn’t even meant for her.
She’d stepped into the trajectory while trying to shield another teammate.
The sharpened edge struck her across the face.
By the time the Legion escaped…
The damage had already been done.
⸻
Three weeks later…
Her bedroom door remained closed.
No one had seen her outside of brief visits to the infirmary.
Meals left outside the room disappeared eventually.
Nothing else did.
She refused every invitation.
Ignored every knock.
The newest member of the Legion of Doom had vanished without ever leaving headquarters.
At first, everyone assumed she simply needed time.
Then days became weeks.
The television inside her room never turned on.
The lights stayed off.
Even the sounds of movement stopped.
Captain Cold tried sarcasm.
No response.
The Riddler attempted conversation through the door.
Silence.
Grodd offered to “motivate” her.
Lex shut that suggestion down immediately.
Even the Joker…
For perhaps the first time in anyone’s memory…
Walked away without making a joke.
No one knew what to say.
They knew how to rebuild power armor.
Replace cybernetics.
Hide bodies.
Start wars.
None of them knew how to help someone mourn a part of themselves.
Because this wasn’t simply an injury.
It was the sudden loss of the life she’d known.
The confidence she’d carried.
The certainty that tomorrow would look like yesterday.
No amount of advanced technology could erase that overnight.
⸻
Lex stood alone in his office long after everyone else had left.
Dozens of files covered his desk.
Medical specialists.
Experimental prosthetics.
Neural interfaces.
The world’s leading surgeons.
He had contacted every name money could reach.
Some offered possibilities.
None offered certainty.
None addressed the real problem.
She wasn’t hiding because of the injury alone.
She was grieving.
Lex stared at one final name on the screen.
A name he disliked involving unless absolutely necessary.
Slade Wilson.
Deathstroke.
A soldier.
A survivor.
A man who understood what it meant to lose part of yourself and still learn how to keep moving.
Lex hated asking for help.
He hated admitting someone else might be better suited to something.
This time…
He made the call anyway.
Across the hall…
A tray of untouched food still sat outside a closed bedroom door.
For all the Legion’s power…
For all its brilliance…
For all the impossible things its members had accomplished…
None of them could figure out how to help one teammate open a door.
Lex intended to change that.
Even if it meant calling the last person he’d ever expected to rely on.