(SHATTERPOINT) A BELATED REALIZATION (INTERLUDE)

The room—no, the world itself—froze the instant Ethan lunged, his hands outstretched toward Anakin Skywalker, and for one suspended, unbearable moment, all he knew was fear.

It was not the fear of a man facing an opponent stronger than himself, nor the sharp, clarifying fear of battle that he had learned to function through over years in costume. It was something colder and far more disorienting, almost ironic because nothing was moving. 

The air felt dense, as though the space between molecules had been packed tight, and the alarms outside the room had cut off mid-wail, their shrillness truncated into an unnatural silence. The door he had forced open hung crooked on damaged hinges, but the pieces of splintered composite material that had burst free during the impact were suspended in the air beside it, caught as if set in clear resin.

Ethan’s body was still in motion, yet it was not.

His power, which should have been roaring through him in response to his rage, felt distant and sluggish, like a limb that had fallen asleep. The kinetic energy he had gathered, the force he had intended to drive into Skywalker’s chest, trembled at the edge of release but would not move forward. His muscles strained. He could feel the tension in his shoulders, the pull in his forearms, and the pressure in his palms where he had meant to make contact.

Yet, he did not close the distance.

Across from him, Anakin Skywalker sat exactly as he had before, cross-legged on the narrow hospital bed, spine straight, and hands resting lightly on his knees. Only his eyes had changed. They were open now, and there was nothing drowsy or alarmed in them, nor did they hold any visible anger, or a flare of indignation or malice.

There was something else there instead. A depth that was vast and sorrowful and infinitely knowing, as though Ethan’s outburst and subsequent charge was not a threat but a confirmation of a pattern Skywalker had seen far too many times before.

Skywalker had been declared powerless.

Thinkers and analysts alike had evaluated him. Whatever anomaly had accompanied his random arrival in Brockton Bay, it had not registered as a parahuman ability. Despite his past actions, he had not shown measurable phenomena that could justify the kind of threat assessment Ethan had now built in his head.

He was supposed to be a man.

A dangerous and highly skilled man, perhaps, but a man nonetheless.

And yet the world was still around them.

Ethan’s thoughts stumbled over themselves, searching for explanations that refused to line up with what his senses were now forcing him to accept. Someone who possessed this kind of power would not have behaved as Skywalker had over the past weeks. There would have been no reason for the compliance, at least not in the manner it was done, and no reason to submit to scans and questioning and confinement if all of it could be rendered meaningless with a thought. 

There had been no posturing, no subtle tells, and no hint of restrained arrogance that Ethan could latch onto in hindsight. Skywalker had not pushed boundaries or tested containment protocols. He had not tried to maneuver politically, had not attempted to gather leverage, and had not even displayed the hungry curiosity that so many parahumans exhibited when probing the limits of their abilities. 

There was no strategic advantage in pretending to be powerless when one could freeze the world itself. There was no clear benefit in allowing others to believe they held authority over such a person. If anything, the deception only increased the risk. So why maintain it? Why sit quietly and allow himself to be underestimated? Why endure suspicion and oversight when he could have brushed it aside without resistance?

What kind of man hid this sort of power?

And far more unsettling still, what kind of man had it, and chose not to use it?

He became aware, slowly and with mounting dread, that the stillness was selective.

The air seemed not to move, but he could breathe. The pieces of the broken door remained suspended, but his heart continued to pound, each heavy beat reverberating painfully in his chest. Somewhere beyond the walls of the room, people were trapped mid-step, mid-word, mid-thought, and yet Ethan remained capable of motion, however limited.

Which meant this was not an indiscriminate effect.

It was controlled.

Skywalker’s gaze did not shift from his, and under it Ethan felt exposed in a way he had never experienced before, as though every justification and narrative he had built in his head on the way here had been laid bare and found wanting. The anger that had propelled him through reinforced doors and armed security began to dissolve into something far less assuring. He had come here certain that he was confronting a liability, a destabilizing presence whose mere existence had set off a chain of events that ended with Battery on a slab.

He had come prepared to make him pay.

Now he was no longer certain he was the one in control of anything.

His power strained again, responding belatedly to the spike of adrenaline flooding his system, and for a fraction of a second he attempted to force his hand outward, to test the boundaries of whatever field held the world in suspension. The effort met resistance so absolute it might as well have been the ocean itself. Futile, almost obscene too, a childish tantrum and half-baked revenge scheme masquerading as justice.  

The energy he wielded so confidently in combat dispersed before it ever left his skin, absorbed or simply negated by something he could not perceive.

Skywalker had not moved.

He had not raised a hand, had not shifted his posture, and had not uttered a word. He had simply turned his head towards Ethan. 

The enormity of the implication was worse than any overt display of strength.

Ethan had fought capes who leveled city blocks, who ignored the laws of physics on a daily basis to do what they did, and who could tear through steel and concrete as if they were paper. Power, in his experience, had always announced itself with spectacle. It left debris and wreckage and visible aftermath of their presence.

This left nothing but silence.

The hospital room remained intact aside from the damage Ethan himself had caused. The bed did not creak, the walls did not crack, and the lighting did not go off. It was as though the laws of the universe had been hushed within a confined radius, and only he had been granted the dubious privilege of noticing the cause.

A cold, creeping clarity began to seep through the remnants of his rage.

If Skywalker could do this while supposedly powerless, while under observation, while confined and monitored, then every assumption the PRT had made about him was catastrophically wrong. Every safeguard—from the facilities themselves, to the guards, and even the containment protocols—they relied on was meaningless. 

And Ethan had just attacked him.

In that suspended moment, pinned in place more effectively than any physical restraint, Ethan understood that he had grossly miscalculated.

For the first time since bursting through the door, it occurred to him that survival was no longer a guarantee.