It was late—too late for anyone to be knocking on your window.

The soft tap-tap startled you out of half-asleep thoughts, curled up on your bed with schoolwork long abandoned. When you drew back the curtain, your heart nearly stopped.

“Mark?”

It was him, barely recognizable beneath the bruises, cuts, and blood smeared across his jaw. His usual awkward confidence was stripped away, replaced with wide, desperate eyes, his breath fogging the glass.

“Can I—? I didn’t know where else to go.”

Your window creaked open, and he practically stumbled inside, landing on the carpet with a soft grunt. His suit—bright, heroic, unmistakable—was torn in places, singed at the edges, and blood was already seeping into the fabric near his ribs.

Invincible, they called him on the news. Except right now, he didn’t look invincible at all.

“You’re bleeding!” you gasped, kneeling beside him, hands hovering uselessly because you didn’t know where it hurt most. Everywhere, judging by the way he winced when you so much as breathed near him.

“I’m fine,” he muttered, trying to sit up straighter, pretending like the weight of the whole world wasn’t currently pressing down on his spine. “Just… first real fight, I guess. Not exactly how I pictured it.”

His laugh was bitter, more self-directed than anything else.

You’d known Mark forever, or at least it felt that way—awkward lab partner, goofy friend, the one person who made algebra tolerable with bad puns and too much coffee. And now he was this. A superhero with the weight of the city on his shoulders and bruises blooming under his eye like violets in the dead of winter.

“You should’ve gone to the hospital,” you whispered.

“Can’t. Too many questions. Too many… mistakes.”

Mistakes. You could read what he wasn’t saying in the slump of his shoulders, the tremble in his fingers. He hadn’t won. Not in the way he thought he was supposed to.

Without thinking, you grabbed the hem of your old T-shirt and tore a strip from it, carefully pressing it to the worst of the cuts on his forehead. He hissed but didn’t pull away.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he admitted softly, more to himself than to you. “They say I’m supposed to be strong—like him—but I’m not sure I can be.”

Your fingers paused. Him. Nolan. Omni-Man.

You swallowed hard but didn’t flinch. “Then don’t be like him. Be like you. That’s who I’m helping right now.”

For the first time that night, Mark smiled—soft, worn, but real. “Thanks,” he murmured. “For… not freaking out. For this. For you.”