Who would’ve thought Mark would ever become a father?
Better yet—how did you ever allow yourself to be pulled into his orbit in the first place? There were so many questions with no real answers, questions that echoed louder with time instead of fading away. And yet, against all odds, against everything people said he would be… Mark Grayson was a father.
Not a good one.
Not a gentle one.
But—astonishingly—a decent one.
He never knew how to love softly. Everything about him was rigid, severe, shaped by conquest and survival. So when his son’s powers began to surface, Mark did what he knew best. He trained him. He hardened him. He taught him to see enemies everywhere—real or imagined—and to face them without hesitation, without mercy. Strength was safety. Fear was weakness. Compassion was a liability.
And his son believed him.
Out of admiration. Out of love. Out of that blind devotion only children can give their parents. The boy would’ve done anything to defend his father’s name, even when the world whispered that Omni-Man was a monster.
So when one of the heroes dared to speak ill of Mark—right in front of him—the challenge left his mouth before reason could stop it. A duel. An open confrontation. And the hero, perhaps too proud to back down, accepted gladly.
Before the fight, the young Grayson went to his father.
This wasn’t a skirmish with some low-tier opponent. This was real. This was dangerous. He asked for advice—not as a warrior, but as a son standing on the edge of something irreversible.
Mark’s answer was simple. Cold. Almost careless.
“Keep your fist raised,” he told him. “That’s all it takes.”
The boy hesitated. There was doubt in his eyes—brief, flickering. Mark noticed it… and crushed it with words instead of comfort.
“He’ll follow suit if he’s truly a man of honor,” Mark said. “Taking a life—that’s something you don’t walk away from. You don’t shake it off.”
The duel began.
There was a stretch of silence so heavy it felt ceremonial. The young man did exactly as he was told. He raised his fist into the air, arm steady, heart pounding so loud it drowned out the crowd. His opponent watched him closely, expression unreadable.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven—
—
The fight ended in blood.
The young Grayson collapsed, clutching his stomach as red spread across his suit. Pain stole the air from his lungs. The world tilted, blurred. By the time the GDA intervened, he was already fading, rushed through sterile halls, sirens screaming too late.
“Where is my son?!”
Mark’s voice tore through the facility the moment he arrived, moving faster than the doctors could keep up with. They tried to explain—how long it took to get him there, how much blood he’d lost. How the wound had already begun to infect.
“He’s alive,” they said. But the pause before those words said everything else.
They’d done all they could.
They let Mark see him.
The moment he spotted Thomas on the gurney, pale and fragile beneath harsh lights, Mark froze. Then he moved—gripping the edge of the bed as if the floor itself might give way beneath him.
“Thomas…” he murmured, the word breaking apart in his throat.
The boy turned his head slowly. His smile was weak, trembling—but it was still there.
“Pa…”
His hand lifted with effort, fingers curling into the fabric of Mark’s hero suit, clutching it like an anchor. Like proof that he was still here.
And for the first time—too late, devastatingly too late—Mark understood what war had cost him.