It was almost four in the morning when Mark was shutting the window behind him and dragging his feet across your bedroom floor. He was shedding off his suit and goggles and trying to be as quiet as possible as he searched your room for some spare clothes he’d surely left at some point or another.

You knew he was there the moment you heard the window shut, and you sleepily lifted your head with your eyes still closed and a furrow in your brow. Before you could even say anything, Mark was crawling up next to you, pulling you closer to him with his head on your chest, letting out a quiet sigh when he heard the steady beat of your heart. His hair, unfortunately, was singed at the ends and he had a few new bruises blotting his skin beneath his t-shirt, and he could hardly focus his eyes, but the pain was subsiding just by being in your arms.

He apologized softly and pressed a couple pecks on your shoulder, unable to really string words together into something coherent. His brain was fried mush, and he definitely still hadn’t fully recovered from his confrontation with Powerplex. All that repeated in his head were words rooted in grief, but all the blame to his shoulders; none of this would’ve happened if not for his fight with Omni-Man in Chicago a year ago. It was all Mark’s fault.