Mark left Amber's place with the taste of reheated pasta and unresolved feelings still in his mouth.
They'd watched the replay together, him pointing out where the cameras missed things, where Eve had done more than the footage showed, where he'd almost dropped the bus before catching it again. Amber had laughed in the right places, winced at the others, and walked him to the door with a "Text me next time, remember?" that felt like both a joke and a test.
"I will," he'd promised.
Now he was on the sidewalk, hands in his jacket pockets, the chill night air doing its best to cool him down. Streetlights cast long shadows, cars hummed past, and somewhere in the distance a siren wailed half‑heartedly.
He didn't take off and fly home. Not yet. He needed the walk—needed to feel the concrete under his shoes, needed to be Mark Grayson for a few more minutes before he went back to being the kid who could accidentally punch through a city bus.
He was halfway down the block when a familiar pink shimmer lit the corner of his vision.
Eve dropped out of the sky in a controlled arc, her constructs fading as her boots hit the pavement with a soft thump. She straightened, adjusting her jacket over her costume.
"Hey," she said.
Mark tried for a smile. "Hey. Stalking me?"
"Checking on you," she said. "You bolted the second the news feed cut to talking heads. Thought you might need…" She gestured vaguely. "Friend time."
He shrugged, staring ahead. "Just needed air."
Eve fell into step beside him, hands tucked into her pockets. For a block, they walked in silence, their footsteps in sync.
"How's Amber?" she asked eventually.
"Good," he said. "Watching the news. Making fun of my form. You know."
"She has a point," Eve said dryly. "Your landing on the car? Sloppy."
He huffed a small laugh despite himself. "Yeah. Almost lost the bus."
She sobered a little. "But you didn't."
"No," he said. "I didn't."
They crossed a side street. A car slowed as it passed them, the driver doing a double take. Eve kept her eyes forward. Mark hunched his shoulders a bit, like that might make him less recognizable.
"So," Eve said, after a moment. "Everything okay with you two?"
Mark exhaled. "Yes. No. I don't know."
She waited.
"She's…amazing," he said finally. "Smart, funny, doesn't take crap from anybody. She actually cares about things. And I keep…" He searched for the word. "I keep ghosting her without meaning to."
Eve glanced at him. "You're not ghosting. You're saving people."
"Tell that to the part of her that's sitting on the couch wondering why I disappeared mid‑sentence," he muttered. "I show up after the fight, covered in dust, and I can't even tell her why I'm late. Just 'Sorry, stuff came up.'"
"Stuff like mutant seafood," Eve said.
"Yeah," he said. "And someday she's going to stop accepting that as an answer."
They walked past a closed corner store, its metal grate pulled down.
"She said she's trying to be patient," Mark went on. "And I believe her. But she also mentioned she has friends who just…call her. During the chaos. Like it's no big deal."
"You mean Morgan," Eve said.
He blinked. "You noticed?"
"I was at the fair, remember?" she said. "Noticed him the moment he opened his mouth."
Mark frowned. "You still think something's off with him."
Eve thought about the way Morgan's eyes had tracked exits, the way he'd dodged her questions without actually lying, the way he'd looked at the career fair like it was a battle map, not a brochure buffet.
"Yeah," she said. "But that's not what we're talking about."
"What are we talking about, then?" he asked.
She took a breath. "You're frustrated."
He kicked at a stray pebble. "I'm trying so hard not to screw this up," he said. "With Amber. With…everything. Cecil. Dad. School. You. And it feels like the more I try, the more stuff slips through my fingers."
Eve's jaw tightened at the word "Dad," but she didn't touch it. Not tonight.
"You're juggling," she said. "And half the balls are made of nitroglycerin."
He snorted. "Great mental image."
"I'm serious," she said. "You're doing two full‑time jobs with one life. There's no version of that where you don't drop something sometimes."
"I don't want it to be her," he said quietly.
Eve looked at him then, really looked at him—the hunched shoulders, the way his hands tapped against his thighs like he was holding back motion, the guilt sitting behind his eyes.
"It's not going to be as simple as 'don't screw up,'" she said. "You're going to mess up. You already have. So have I."
"I punched a guy through a wall last month because I misjudged," he said. "You patched it up with, like, concrete constructs and told the EMTs it was an 'explosion.'"
"Well, it was," she said. "An explosion of poor aim."
He managed another weak laugh.
She sighed. "Look. I'm not great at relationship advice. My track record is…spotty. But you need to realize something: you're asking Amber to live in a world she doesn't have all the rules for yet."
"I know," he said. "That's the problem. I can't give her the rulebook."
"Then you have to give her something else," Eve said. "Consistency. Honesty where you can. And maybe just…showing up when you say you will. Or letting her decide if she wants to stay, instead of making that choice for her by disappearing."
"I went to her house tonight," he said. "I'm trying."
"I know," she said. "And that matters."
They walked under a streetlight. The halo of light turned their shadows long and thin.
"But," she added quietly, "you can't have everything both ways forever. You can't be fully open with her and fully secret with her. That split…it's going to hurt."
"I can't tell her," he said, almost desperate. "Not with everything else going on. Not with…" He swallowed Omni‑Man's name. "Not yet."
"I'm not saying you should," she said quickly. "I'm saying pretending everything's fine while you're carrying all this is going to break you. And when you crack, the people closest to you get hit by shrapnel."
He flinched, because he knew she was speaking from experience.
"I don't want to lose her," he said.
"Then treat her like she's actually there," Eve said. "Not like she's someone you visit between disasters."
"That's not fair," he said, stung. "I don't—"
"I know you don't mean to," she cut in gently. "But it feels that way. To her. To anyone who isn't…in on it."
He ran a hand through his hair. "You sound like you've had this argument before."
Eve smiled without humor. "You'd be amazed how many guys think 'I'm protecting you by lying to you' is romantic."
"It's not like that," he said, reflexive.
"Isn't it?" she asked softly.
He stopped walking.
They stood at the edge of a crosswalk, the red hand blinking at them from the opposite side.
"I'm not—" He stopped, tried again. "I don't want to control her. I don't want to leave her in the dark forever. I just…don't know how to balance any of this."
Eve turned to face him fully. "Then say that," she said. "To her. Not to me. Tell her you're overwhelmed. Tell her you're trying and you don't have all the answers. She might get mad. She might walk. But at least she'll be making an informed choice."
"And if she walks?" he asked.
"Then she walks," Eve said. "And that'll suck. A lot. But it'll still be better than slowly strangling whatever you have by pretending your double life isn't strangling you."
The crosswalk light changed. They didn't move immediately.
"She mentioned Morgan," Mark said after a moment. "That he called. That it felt…normal."
Eve's mouth tightened. "Yeah," she said. "I heard."
"He's just a guy," Mark said. "Right?"
"I don't know what he is," Eve said honestly. "But I know he's not nothing."
Mark shifted, uncomfortable. "You think I should be worried?"
"I think," she said carefully, "that if you leave empty spaces in your life, someone is always going to come along and fill them. Morgan, or someone else. You can't control that. You can only decide how honest you're going to be about the spaces."
He stared at her for a long second.
"Since when did you become the voice of brutal wisdom?" he asked, trying for lightness.
She gave him a sideways look. "Since we started watching people get killed because other people didn't say what they should've when they had the chance."
That shut him up.
They started walking again.
By the time they reached the street where their paths diverged—Eve up, Mark forward—the frustration in his chest had mellowed into something else. Not peace. Not yet. But a rough outline of what he needed to do.
"Thanks," he said, as they paused under another streetlight. "For…listening. And for not sugarcoating it."
"Anytime," Eve said. "That's what partners are for."
He smiled faintly. "We're partners now?"
"Don't let it go to your head," she said. "I'm still better at landing."
She lifted off in a soft swirl of pink light, rising above the rooftops. Mark watched her go, then turned toward home.
He still didn't have a plan for how to fix everything.
But he knew this much: the air around him felt heavier because the game he was playing wasn't just capes and villains anymore. It was hearts, too.
And those pieces were a lot easier to break.
Eve felt the pull before she made the choice.
She hovered above the city, pink light humming around her, watching the last of the emergency vehicles peel away from the monster's carcass. Mark was a glow in the distance, heading home on foot, shoulders hunched under invisible weight.
She could follow him, keep talking, keep trying to triage his life with words.
Instead, she turned.
Lincoln wasn't far as the powered girl flies. The houses were smaller, the yards narrower, the streetlights a little dimmer. Normal. Quiet.
A couple of text scrolls and one quick satellite lookup later, she was above the Parkers' block, hovering just high enough not to trip any casual glances out of bedroom windows.
She found him by feel more than sight—there was a subtle wrongness to where he was on the map of the city in her head. Not dangerous, not yet. Just…sharper than the background.
She drifted down, landing as lightly as she could on the small patch of roof outside his window. The curtain was drawn, but a faint strip of light leaked around the edges.
She knocked. Three short taps.
Inside, something shifted. She felt a flicker—attention snapping into focus. Then the curtain pulled back slightly.
Morgan looked at her through the glass, expression unreadable for a heartbeat.
Then he sighed, like he'd been expecting this sooner or later, and unlatched the window.
"Neighborhood watch is very dedicated tonight," he said quietly, stepping back to let her in.
She swung one leg over the sill, then the other, closing the window behind her. The room was small but neat—bed made, books stacked on the dresser, a Go board on the desk with a game mid‑play. A faint smell of laundry detergent and whatever Helen had cooked last.
"You sensed me," she said. Not quite a question.
"Let's just say I'm jumpy when glowing people hover outside my window," he replied. "You want to sit?"
He gestured to the bed and then, pointedly, took the chair by the desk himself. For a second, she almost smiled at the reversal.
She stayed standing.
"Okay," he said, folding his arms. "You came all the way out here. You clearly have something to say. Go ahead."
Eve studied him. He wasn't posturing. He wasn't pretending not to know why she was there. He just watched her with those too‑calm eyes, waiting to see which script she'd follow.
"I talked to Mark," she said finally.
"Busy night," Morgan said. "He get a punch card for free coffee every ten rescues?"
"He's…trying," she said. "With Amber. With everything. And then there's you."
"Me," Morgan echoed.
"You keep showing up," she said. "At the game. At the fair. On her phone during a monster attack. You're…a variable."
He tilted his head. "And you don't like variables."
"I don't like unknowns," she corrected. "You're clearly not just some guy who got lucky in a hallway fight. You move like you're expecting trouble. You talk like you know more than you should. And Amber likes you. A lot."
He let that sit for a second.
"Sounds like she has taste," he said lightly. Then, more serious: "You're not wrong about any of that. But before we get into dissecting me, let's call this what it is."
He held her gaze.
"You're worried I'm going to hurt her," he said.
"Yes," Eve said simply. "One way or another."
He nodded once, almost appreciative of the honesty.
"Options," he said.
She frowned. "What?"
"Everyone is entitled to options," he said. "Especially Amber."
Eve folded her arms. "That's a convenient philosophy for the guy who showed up second."
He gave a small, humorless huff. "If I were here to run some kind of playbook, I'd pretend otherwise. I'm not. I meant what I said."
She waited.
"Whatever you think I am," he said, "I am not a hero or a villain. I'm not auditioning for a cape. I'm not angling for a mask. That entire spectrum?" He flicked his fingers as if brushing something away. "Not my lane."
"That's not how this works," Eve said. "You don't get to opt out of the board just because you don't like the game. You're already on it."
"I'm on a board," he agreed. "But not yours. Not Cecil's. Not Nolan's. Not Mark's. And I'm not interested in being drafted."
His tone was calm, but there was steel under it.
"Amber is more important than that," he said.
Eve blinked. "Than…what?"
"Than all of it," he said. "Teams. Sides. Titles. The world's obsessed with heroes and villains right now. Who's right, who's wrong, who gets a statue. Meanwhile, actual people get chewed up in the middle."
He leaned back in the chair, studying the half‑finished Go game on his desk for a moment before looking back at her.
"You and Invincible can take care of the rest," he said. "Monsters, aliens, crime sprees, all that. You're good at it. You'll get better. Maybe you'll even survive long enough to figure out how broken the system is."
"That's…reassuring," she said dryly.
"I'm not here to reassure you," he said. "I'm here to be clear. I'm not angling to be the third point in some dramatic love triangle. I'm not here to steal your partner. I'm here because Amber deserves more than one path she didn't choose."
He paused, choosing his next words.
"Protecting her," he said quietly, "protects the world. Saving her saves the world. That's all I'm willing to do."
Eve's brow creased. "That's…a big statement."
"It's a simple one," he said. "You know how many 'world‑saving' decisions get made by people who never once think about the individual they're sacrificing? I've seen enough stories—seen enough outcomes—to know that if you focus on the abstract 'world' and forget the person right in front of you, you end up with a graveyard and a speech."
"You're talking like you've lived this already," she said.
He smiled without humor. "Call it an education."
She shifted, glancing at the Go board again. Black and white stones in delicate balance, lines of influence snaking across the grid.
"What happens," she asked, "if your idea of 'saving her' and ours don't line up?"
"Then we'll have a problem," he said calmly. "And I'll deal with it when it comes. But not by putting on a cape. Not by signing up with Cecil. Not by letting someone else decide what she's worth."
Eve met his eyes. "And what do you think she's worth?"
"More than being the civilian collateral in somebody else's origin story," he said. "More than being the girlfriend who waits at home and forgives everything. More than being the girl who gets hurt so a hero can 'grow.'"
His voice stayed level, but it carried a weight she recognized—anger that had cooled into conviction.
"So yeah," he finished. "Options. If she chooses Mark, fine. If she chooses me, fine. If she chooses neither and decides the whole cape circus isn't worth it, even better. My job, as far as I'm concerned, is making sure she has a real choice. Not one boxed in by secrets and expectations."
Eve was quiet for a long moment.
"You know," she said finally, "for someone who claims he's not a hero, you talk a lot like one."
"You're confusing clarity with heroism," he said. "Heroes make speeches about saving everyone. I'm just telling you whose safety I'm prioritizing."
"And if protecting her means going up against things way bigger than hallway bullies?" she asked. "Against people like…him?" She didn't say Nolan's name either.
"Then I do what I have to," Morgan said. "For her. Not for the statue. Not for the planet's approval rating. For her."
"That's…narrow," she said.
"It's focused," he corrected. "You already have big‑picture people. Cecil. Omni‑Man. Mark. You. Someone in this city should be allowed to care about one person without apologizing for it."
Eve let that sink in.
"You're dangerous," she said quietly.
He smiled, just a little. "Everyone worth worrying about is."
She studied him, weighing, like she'd weighed the shapes on her constructs a thousand times.
"I don't trust you," she said at last. "Not yet."
"Good," he said. "You shouldn't. Trust me on this: the day you start trusting people just because they say the right things is the day someone like Nolan writes your ending for you."
"But," she added, almost reluctantly, "I don't think you're lying. About Amber."
"I'm not," he said.
"And I don't think you're aiming to blow up what she has with Mark just to watch it burn," she said.
"Also not," he said. "If they make it work? Great. She deserves a version of this where the guy she likes manages to show up and tell the truth. I won't sabotage that. I'll just…be there if he doesn't."
A backup line of defense, she thought. Not for the world. For her.
"Okay," Eve said slowly. "Then here's where I land: I'm going to keep an eye on you. On all of this. Not because I think you're the villain in some story, but because I've seen too many stories go bad when no one was watching."
"Fair," he said. "I'd be disappointed if you didn't."
She moved toward the window, then paused with her hand on the latch.
"One more thing," she said, glancing back over her shoulder. "You talk about not being a hero or a villain like it's a binary. It's not. It's a spectrum. And whether you like it or not, you're already on it."
He tilted his head. "You saying that so I feel better, or so you do?"
"Neither," she said. "I'm saying it so when things get worse—and they will—you remember you had chances to pick how far down that line you went."
He considered that, then nodded once. "Duly noted."
She opened the window. Cool night air spilled in.
"Goodnight, Morgan," she said.
"Goodnight, Eve," he replied. "Try not to let the world end without me."
She gave him a look that said, You're not as funny as you think, and then stepped out, pink light blooming around her as she rose into the sky.
Morgan watched her ascend until she was just a fading spark above the neighborhood.
Then he turned back to the Go board on his desk.
He studied the patterns for a long moment, then picked up a single black stone and placed it carefully in a corner, reinforcing a shape that had looked weak a moment before.
"Options," he murmured. "Always options."
Whatever the world thought of him—hero, villain, anomaly, problem—he knew this much:
When the board got crowded, the stones that really mattered weren't the ones flashing across the sky.
They were the ones you refused to sacrifice.