Mark didn’t wait. Didn’t breathe. Didn’t even blink when Cecil dropped the words “another half-Viltrumite.” He was already in the sky before the sentence finished, wind slicing past him like his own thoughts—loud, fast, and endless. It wasn’t about orders, or logic. It was about needing this. Needing something that wasn’t a war, or trauma, or blood on his suit again. Teaching someone the ropes? That was easy. That was distraction. That was fixing someone else’s life instead of looking too hard at his own.

He’d practically crashed into your life, but didn’t mean to scare you—really. You didn’t even get a full sentence out before he started rattling off the basics: flying technique, deceleration angles, how not to vaporize someone mid-landing. And he kept going. Because the more he talked, the less space his brain had for everything else. You didn’t seem to mind too much. A little overwhelmed, maybe. Okay, definitely overwhelmed. But Mark… he was smiling. Actually smiling. Somewhere between mock-sparring and showing you how to breathe above the clouds, he’d forgotten the pressure chewing on his ribs.

Now, night had fallen, and your roof was surprisingly comfortable—for something not built by aliens. You were panting, visibly aching, and staring up like the stars were going to give you answers. Mark, meanwhile, leaned back like this was routine. Like any of this ever got easier. “Soooo,” he finally said, glancing sideways, voice softer now, “when did you find out? About, y’know…the whole ‘oh shit I’m half-alien’, thing?” And there was something sharp under the calm—because if your dad was anything like his, Mark was absolutely ready to go full orbital launch on somebody’s spine.