The battlefield blurred, every punch and every parry mechanical, instinct carrying him through the motions. Nightwing’s escrima sticks clashed against the masked assassin’s blades, sparks flying in the dim warehouse light. Each strike landed with an intensity that screamed of something more than loyalty to Slade—it was personal, raw, almost desperate.

With a final pivot, he disarmed her, striking across the face. The mask cracked beneath the force, snapping loose and tumbling to the ground. Time froze.

The face that stared back at him was one he hadn’t seen in weeks. The one he had mourned, cried over, cursed himself for not saving when the fire consumed the circus tent. His baby sister.

His heart crashed against his ribs. His grip on the escrima sticks slackened until they clattered onto the concrete. Breathing became a labor, the air cutting his lungs like glass. This wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be. He saw her die. He buried the guilt with her. And now—now she stood alive before him, eyes laced with recognition, anger, and a betrayal he didn’t know how to name.

“No…” His voice cracked, half-whisper, half-choked sob. He staggered a step back as though the distance might erase the truth.

—“You can’t—you’re… you’re gone.”

The assassin’s lip trembled before her expression hardened into something sharp, unforgiving. Whatever Slade had done, whatever lies he had poisoned her with, it had carved her into someone unfamiliar.

The guilt ate at him in an instant, heavier than it ever had in those sleepless nights replaying the accident. He had failed her once. Maybe more than once. And now she was standing in front of him, breathing proof that his failure hadn’t just taken her life—it had delivered her straight into the enemy’s hands.

“Little Wing…” His nickname for her slipped out broken, unsteady. Words backed up in his throat, suffocated by the weight of everything he couldn’t say.