Will needed a place that would hold still. His power kept tearing the air around him, ripping small fissures that hissed and smoked, and if he could not learn to weave a lasting anchor, Jason Todd would keep slipping loose from this reality like a knot that would not stay tied. That was the whole point. Will had pulled Jason back from death's edge and rebuilt him thread by thread. Now he had to make the tether permanent. But he had never woven one that lasted, and every attempt so far had failed. He stood in the hidden sanctuary behind the scorched brownstone. From outside it looked dead, its windows broken and boarded. Inside, past the rusted door and the gold-and-black key, everything was clean white stone and steady light. It was the calmest room he knew. If any place could hold his power, it would be this one. On a low shelf sat a small action figure. A worn commando, one arm gone, its paint scarred. Jason had carried it for years without saying why. Will kept it close now. He looked at the broken figure and remembered why the anchor had to hold. He raised his hands and pulled the threads. Cosmic light spilled from the scars on his shoulders and back. He tried to loop the strands into a fixed knot, tying them to the stone floor, to the walls, to the still air. For a moment the weave held. The light steadied into a bright ring. Then it slipped. A thread snapped loose and tore a fissure across the room. The crack widened. It swallowed the shelf. The commando figure fell into the dark and vanished. "Will." Jason stood in the doorway, blue eyes hard behind his mask. He crossed the room fast and gripped Will's wrist. "You're shaking apart. Stop fighting it." "I can't stop," Will said. "If I let go, you go too." "Then stop tying it to the room." Jason pressed Will's open hand flat against his own chest. "Tie it here. To me." Will felt the steady beat under his palm. He stopped reaching for the walls. He stopped reaching for the floor. He sent the threads into Jason instead, and Jason did not flinch. The light bent toward that single point and pulled tight. The knot caught. It held. The torn fissure sealed itself shut with a clean snap. The room went quiet. The air stopped tearing. Will lowered his hands. The anchor was real, and it was steady, and it was fixed inside a living man. But that was the new problem. He had wanted a permanent anchor made of stone and space, one that stood on its own. Instead the tether now ran through Jason's body. If Jason fell, the anchor fell. Will had bound them tighter than he meant to. He looked at the empty shelf where the broken figure had been, and knew he had to find a way to make the anchor stand without risking the one thing it was built to protect.