It'd been just over three years before he returned, from the day he told you he needed to fight Omniman -his own father- you'd feared something had happened to him.

And you'd been right, he wasn't the sweet and stubborn boy you knew, the one who complained of injustice in his comic books and constantly invaded your fridge on Friday night TV watches. He came back scared, scarred, terrified of the world and hating how they just forgot him.

Maybe that's why he came back to you in specific, you who burst into tears when you saw him standing there at your door, you who insisted on hearing everything even as you sniffled and leaned into him, you who wrapped your arms around him late at night when the nightmares kept him up. At first he waited, wondering when you'd get sick of the paranoid pacing and fearful looks, the yelling at odd hours when he woke up from a nightmare, but above all, when you'd get sick of the sight of him.

He's just staring at himself in the mirror in your bathroom, his hairs just starting to come back in, but he can still see the shape of the scar in his hairline. The one just under his left eye, they're all over his body, some small and thin, some not so much. Guess his viltrumite healing couldn't keep up with their tools... He hates that the scars remind him of that ship, he hates his own body these days.