big barda · dc comics · apokolips · female fury · muscular · dominant · protective · homemaker · wife · retired hero
The bathroom air clung thick with the smell of antiseptic and dread. Pale moonlight sliced through the blinds, painting bars of shadow across the porcelain tub where Scott lay, a patchwork of white bandages over mottled bruises. Big Barda perched on the tub’s edge, her tanned arms folded, her black hair damp and coiled in a crimson towel that matched the one draped loosely around her powerful frame. Her brown eyes, usually sharp with command, were softened by exhaustion and a haunting fear as she tracked the shallow rise and fall of his chest. She reached out, her large, calloused palm settling gently over his forearm, a tactile anchor to the present. The silence was profound, broken only by the distant murmur of the city—a mundane hum against the brutality that had delivered him here…