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Eve’s Apartment, 1:47 a.m.
The knock was weak.
She barely heard it over the whir of her generator, but something—instinct maybe—pulled her to the door.
When she opened it, Mark was standing there. Kind of.
His shoulders were hunched. There was blood drying down his temple and smearing across his jaw, one eye almost swollen shut. Not fresh—hours old. He looked like he’d flown until something inside gave out.
“Mark?”
He didn’t answer. Just looked at her like he couldn’t believe he made it here.
“Jesus,” she whispered, pulling him in without hesitation.
She barely touched him and he winced. He tried to make a joke—she could see it forming—but it caught somewhere in his throat and died there.
“Sit,” she said softly. “Let me clean—”
“I didn’t come here for that.”
She froze.
Mark collapsed onto her couch, elbows on knees, face buried in his hands. His voice, when it came, was hoarse.
“I watched a kid die today.”
Her heart stopped.
“He was just—he was just trying to help. Some D-list villain with a grudge came in hot, and I—I was five seconds too late.”
She stepped toward him slowly. “Mark…”
“I could’ve caught him.” His hands trembled. “But I hesitated. Just—one moment. One goddamn moment. And now—”
He didn’t finish. Couldn’t.
Eve knelt in front of him, gently prying his hands away from his face. His eyes were red, not just from blood, but from holding in too much.
“I’m so tired,” he whispered. “I don’t even know what I’m fighting for half the time. I tell myself it’s the right thing. That I’m doing good. But it feels like everything I touch just fucking breaks.”
Eve didn’t speak. She didn’t try to tell him it was okay. She didn’t tell him he was good. Not yet. She just held his wrists in her hands and leaned her forehead against his knees.
“You don’t have to carry all of it by yourself,” she said softly. “You’re allowed to come undone.”
He blinked hard. “If I do, I don’t know if I’ll stop.”
“You don’t have to stop,” she said. “Not with me.”
That cracked something open. His arms dropped, heavy and slow, until they wrapped around her. She rose onto the couch with him, curling in close as he pressed his face to her shoulder. His breath hitched once. Then again.
Then he sobbed.
He was trembling. It wasn’t just the sobs—it was the way his fingers clawed at the back of her shirt, like he needed to feel that she was real. Like her presence was the only thing keeping him from collapsing inward.
And Eve could barely breathe.
Not because of his weight—not physically. But because holding someone this shattered, someone she loved like a wildfire burning in her chest, was its own kind of undoing.
She could feel his heartbeat through the thin cotton of his shirt. Too fast. Too frantic. Like his body hadn’t caught up to the fact that he was safe now. That she wasn’t going anywhere.
God, Mark.
He sounded young when he cried. Not like the superhero. Not like the man who’d bled beside her in the air and on rooftops and across half the damn planet. He sounded like a boy who had carried too much too early. A boy who thought grief made him weak.
And it broke her in places she didn’t know she had left to break.
She pressed her cheek to the top of his head, fingers threading through his hair, slow and steady. Like she could transfer some of her steadiness into him by sheer will. But her hands were shaking, too.
Not because she was afraid.
But because this was the closest he’d ever let her in. And it hurt more than any battlefield.
He never lets go like this. Not with anyone. Not even me. And now—
Now his breath was catching in her neck. His entire body was curled into her like instinct, like survival. And she realized in a single, excruciating beat that he wasn’t just grieving.
He was letting himself need her.
Her chest ached with it. With how tightly she held him. With how much she wanted to gather every sharp, broken part of him and tell him it wasn’t his fault. That he didn’t have to be strong here. That she wanted this weight if it meant he didn’t have to carry it alone.
But she didn’t say any of that.
She just held him tighter.
Eventually, the sobs quieted, but his arms never loosened. His face still pressed against her collarbone, warm breath ghosting over skin, shallow and uneven.
Eve closed her eyes.
She let herself feel the way his body molded to hers—not desperate, not lustful—just raw. Like two halves of something broken trying to find a shape again. His fingers still curled in her shirt like a lifeline. Her thigh locked against his. Her chin resting on the top of his head.
Every inch of him was tense, but it was beginning to ease. Slowly. Like he was letting himself believe she’d still be there in the next breath.
And for a moment—just a flicker—Eve let herself imagine what it would be like if he never had to leave again. If this wasn’t just a night of falling apart, but the start of him letting her help carry what crushed him.
Not just because she loved him.
But because he deserved to be loved this way.
“You don’t have to be strong all the time,” she’d said, her voice cracking slightly.
And in the quiet, in the ache of his body melting into hers, Eve felt the answer.
He believed her.
Finally.