(SHATTERPOINT) ET-HAN, NO!

Ethan knew it was stupid.

He knew it on a rational level, the same way he knew evacuation procedures and safety protocols, and the same way he knew the limits of his own power and the importance of not letting emotion dictate action when lives were on the line. Anakin Skywalker could not possibly have been the one who had killed her. There was no evidence, no clear motive, and no logical chain of events that placed Skywalker anywhere near Battery’s cell at the time of her death.

But logic had stopped mattering the moment the words had been said out loud.

Battery was dead.

The sentence still felt wrong in his head. “Dead” was too small a word, too ordinary, and far too final for someone who had once outrun an explosion and laughed about it afterward. For someone who had survived things that should have killed her years ago.

The first time he had heard it, he had stared at the officer in front of him and waited for the punchline that never came.

The man had just looked away.

After that, everything blurred. The room, the voices, the questions, all of it was drowned out by half-formed thoughts, the sound of his own breathing, and the pounding in his ears. 

Ethan did not remember leaving the briefing room. He did not remember who tried to stop him or what they said. He only remembered the pressure in his chest, the way the world seemed to narrow until there was nothing left in it except the word dead and the image of Anakin Skywalker sitting calmly in that hospital room, eyes closed—meditating or pretending to—as if none of this had anything to do with him.

The man was untouched while Battery was being pulled apart by reports and investigations and quiet conversations behind closed doors.

Untouched while she died.

Ethan hit the stairwell door hard enough that it slammed against the wall on the other side. His power flared instinctively, absorbing the impact before it could bruise him, but he did not bother to extend it to said door. A small, childish part of him wanted the noise, to make his feeling known to everyone in the vicinity. As he took the steps two at a time, boots striking metal, he made sure every impact echoed.

Skywalker was not directly responsible.

But he was the reason she had been there in the first place.

He was the reason she had been pulled from active duty, the reason she had been isolated and monitored, and the reason she had gone from a trusted hero to a suspicious liability in the space of a few days. None of this would have happened if Skywalker had not walked into Brockton Bay and decided to destroy everything he touched.

Battery had been safe before him.

Safe, at least, in the way heroes were supposed to be. Respected, backed up, surrounded by people who would have noticed if something went wrong.

Now she was dead in a PRT facility, killed in a way no one could explain.

And that was enough.

Enough that Ethan stopped caring about what made sense, or that half of the building was already on high alert because of his earlier outburst. Enough that procedure and optics and Armsmaster’s words faded into meaningless background noise. Enough that the only thing left in his head was the certainty that someone had to pay for this, and the only person close enough to reach was the man who had started it all.

He broke into a run.

The corridors of the PRT hospital blurred around him as he pushed past startled staff and security officers who were too slow, too confused, or too unwilling to physically restrain a Protectorate hero in full gear. Someone shouted his name. Someone else ordered him to stop. He barely registered either.

A radio crackled somewhere behind him. Alarms followed a second later, shrill and dissonant with the shouts in the enclosed space.

Every step felt heavier than the last, even with his power controlling his movements, his body responding to his emotional state in ways it never had before. His heart was pounding so hard it hurt, his thoughts spiraling faster and faster, looping the same images over and over.

Battery kicking off him to launch herself in the opposite direction.

Battery laughing in their kitchen.

Battery breathing out his name in a fervent moan in the dark.

Battery… alive.

By the time he reached the right area, he was barely aware of what he was doing. The door access panel beeped in protest as he slammed his palm against it, trying to override the lock with his credentials and sheer force of will. 

The panel blinked red.

He hit it again.

For half a second nothing happened, long enough for him to feel a spike of irrational panic, before the lock disengaged with a dull mechanical click. The door slid open just far enough for him to force it the rest of the way with his shoulder, uncaring about the resulting damage.

Anakin Skywalker’s room looked exactly the same as it had earlier.

The same cream walls, the same single metal-framed bed, and the same man sitting on the bed, back straight, hands resting on his knees, eyes still closed.

As if nothing had changed.

Ethan stood in the doorway, chest heaving, the taste of metal sharp at the back of his throat. His hands were shaking. He had not noticed when he started clenching them, but his gloves creaked, and his fingers ached from the pressure.

Skywalker did not move.

Did not open his eyes.

Did not even seem to notice him.

And that, more than anything else, made something inside Ethan finally snap.

All the careful distinctions between blame and responsibility collapsed into something simpler and uglier, and he took a step forward, all the kinetic energy he had gathered until now begging for release.

Anakin Skywalker would pay.

He would make sure of that.