Lily folded her arms across her chest, leaning against the corridor wall with the deliberate, relaxed posture of someone who had long ago learned that Rex’s moods were a weather system she simply had to endure.

"You disappear for most of the night... now, you emerge looking like you’ve walked through a war zone you refuse to explain, and the very first thing you demand from us is information rather than breakfast." She tilted her head, studying him with amusement. "That is very you... Rex."

’Lily’s being sarcastic right now... both of them probably... I fucking knew these two bitches heard me literally breeding Elizabeth. " Rex thought. ’Oh well... let them...’

"Breakfast isn’t going to solve the problem I’m facing," Rex said, his voice carrying the gravelly weight of his sleeplessness. "Though I wouldn’t turn it down if it appeared."

"It isn’t going to materialize out of thin air," Lily countered with a smirk. "You would actually have to ask nicely."

Rex’s lips thinned. "I have never once asked you for anything nicely, Lily."

"You wouldn’t know what to do with it if I started."

"Try me," Lily challenged.

The words were playful, but there was a spark in her eyes—that specific, dangerous light that appeared whenever she decided a conversation had become interesting enough to play with.

’Is this the reason why they act like this...?’ Rex tried to keep his cool. ’That God of Time is going to pay...’

Rex didn’t retreat. Instead, he closed the distance between them in two measured strides. The air between them seemed to thicken as he reached out, his fingers catching her chin.

His touch was unhurried, deliberate. He tilted her face upward, forcing her to meet his gaze.

In the harsh, unforgiving light of the morning, he looked at her with a rare nakedness, free from tactical calculation and the predator’s assessment. For a heartbeat, he was just a man looking at a woman.

"Lily," he said, his voice dropping to a register meant only for her ears, rough and intimate. "Would you have something waiting for me when I get back tonight? Anything you choose..."

"I trust your taste more than my own most days."

The effect was instantaneous. Lily’s breath caught audibly the telltale hitch of someone who had thrown out a challenge expecting a sparring match and instead received something devastatingly sincere.

"That’s... uh... that’s cheating," she whispered while pouting, her bravado crumbling into something softer, something vulnerable.

"I told you," Rex murmured, his thumb brushing against the edge of her jaw. "I wouldn’t know what to do with ’nice’ if I didn’t practice it."

From the periphery, Diana watched them. Her expression remained flat, but there was a flicker of something genuine in her eyes, a rare, unguarded amusement.

"You two are absolutely insufferable," she said.

Despite the insult, there was a ghost of a smile on her lips. It was the smile of someone who had stopped merely managing this household and had begun, however reluctantly, to belong to it.

Rex turned his attention to Diana. The shift in his energy was immediate and profound.

When he moved from Lily, he moved from playful intimacy to something heavier, something that carried the gravity of a pact. His gaze locked onto hers, and the temperature in the hallway seemed to drop.

"You," he said, his voice taking on a different texture. "I am about to walk into a house that still holds a version of you it doesn’t fully deserve yet."

Diana’s arms unfolded slowly. The amusement died away, replaced by the sharp, focused alertness she wore like armor.

"Huh...? You mean that fucking wimp named Theo..." she said softly, invoking the name, testing the weight of the moment. "You still really care about that guy, huh?"

"Later," Rex commanded.

The word wasn’t a dismissal; it was a promise. His eyes burned with an intensity that demanded her full presence, pulling her out of the role of observer and into the center of his orbit.

"First... come here."

Diana moved toward him without hesitation. There was no hesitation because there was no fear, only a profound, unspoken recognition of the man standing before her.

Rex reached out, taking her face in both hands. This wasn’t the casual touch he had shown Lily; this was something far more deliberate, a rare, fragile gentleness that he reserved specifically for Diana, knowing it was the only language that could pierce through her carefully constructed defenses.

When he kissed her, it was slow. It wasn’t a kiss born of hunger or desperation, but one born of necessity, a grounding ritual, a claim staked before he stepped back into the chaos.

He wanted to taste the reality of her, to remember what he was fighting to preserve before he returned to a world of shifting dimensions and divine threats.

When he finally pulled back, Diana didn’t immediately open her eyes. She kept them closed for a half second longer than necessary, savoring the fading warmth of the contact, her breathing shallow and uneven.

"I needed that," Rex said, his voice rougher than before, "before I go stand in front of a woman who is going to try to break my arm as a greeting."

Diana opened her eyes, and though her expression attempted to regain its usual composure, the flush creeping up her neck betrayed her.

"You say the least romantic things immediately after the most romantic ones," she murmured. But she didn’t step back; she remained within his space, anchored by the contact.

The moment of vulnerability evaporated instantly. Rex’s posture shifted, the tenderness hardening into something cold and tactical.

The soldier had returned.

"Diana," he said, his tone dropping into the register of command. "Aurelia Morr Nightwing..."

"Everything you know about how she trains, her philosophy, and what she values above all else in a sparring partner."

Diana froze. Her eyes searched his, reassessing the conversation with the sharp intensity of someone who had expected a moment of shared intimacy and instead received a tactical briefing.

The whiplash between the man who kissed her and the commander who demanded intel was jarring.

"Aurelia," she repeated, the name carrying a weight of respect and caution.

"She offered to let me help her improve," Rex said flatly. "She made the offer publicly."

"In her world, that’s as good as a formal challenge... I intend to follow through."

Diana went still. Her mind began to work through the implications, her pupils contracting as she processed the implications of such an offer.

"Aurelia Morr Nightwing has been the Nightwing household’s primary combat instructor for twenty-two years," Diana said, her voice gaining a clinical edge. "She developed the hand-to-hand curriculum that Theo went through, that Iris went through, that every elite guard in the household has bled under."

"She is not just a teacher; she is a living weapon." Diana paused, her brow furrowing. "She does not offer to let people help her improve, Rex."

"That’s not how she operates, but... she offers to teach them."

"She offered me," Rex corrected, his gaze unblinking. "Specifically."

"I know," Diana said, and the gravity in her voice made the air between them feel heavy. "Which is exactly why you need to take this with lethal seriousness."

"Aurelia does not make that offer to people she hasn’t already assessed as worth the effort."

"If she’s asking for your help, she’s already decided you’re dangerous enough to be a threat."

Rex didn’t flinch at the assessment. If anything, it confirmed his suspicions.

He needed to know the parameters of the battlefield before he stepped onto it.

"What does she respond to?" Rex pressed, stepping closer, forcing Diana to meet the intensity of his scrutiny. "In a sparring partner..."

"What makes her acknowledge them? What is the breaking point she’s looking for?"

Diana fell silent. She retreated into the deep archives of her memory, accessing the intimate, dangerous knowledge she had gained growing up on the periphery of the Nightwing household, observing the brutal, bone-crushing training sessions that had defined her childhood.