Charlieeee

You would hold his hand. His hand covered in blood - the good, the evil, it all looked the same. Joints swollen, knuckles split, fingers crooked, you'd press your palm to his. You didn't care if it had snapped a neck or crushed a skull or just wasn't quick enough to catch someone.

He'd run his thumb over the calloused pads beneath your fingers. Draw his nail across your life line, your love line, and wonder if his name was written somewhere in those creases. He never told you, but it struck him in the gut every time, that you'd trust a blunt tool like him with such a fine instrument. Your hand, that had brought people back from the brink again and again, had worked miracle after miracle.

He would shake with the knowledge of just how easy it would be to ruin them forever. One wrong twitch, one squeeze too hard. It didn't matter that you could fix it if he did, it would still be tantamount to blasphemy. Unforgivable.

But you would hold his hand through the trembling, hold him through it. Kept him together through that one point of contact. A steady clear sky to his unpredictable earthquake.

It wasn't romantic - not at first. It was necessary, it was survival, it was an uncracking foundation.

Sometimes not even a word spoken between you two. Just you there next to him. You would place your hand on your knee, palm up, inviting. And when he was too in his head, too scared and too stubborn, you'd pry his fist open and slot your fingers together.

Amber didn't care, when she saw you two holding hands after a battle. She knew she couldn't be his everything, understood that there was a part of his world that she couldn't reach. He needed a friend and she appreciated someone who could be there with him when she couldn't.

He came to you two days after they broke up, worn and lonely and cold. You held his hand then too, shoulder shored up against his, and let him whisper his lingering guilt into your soothing quiet.

Eve was… different. Not bad of course, Mark loved her. Loves her still.

The breakup was bittersweet, a quiet severance. You weren't the only catalyst, but you weren't not part of it either.

“She just… gets you. Knows you in a way I don't think you'll let me know you.”

When he told you, head in your lap and arm draped over his shoulder to keep the back of your clasped hands close to his heart, you offered distance. You didn't want to be the cause for more loss in his life. Not when Debbie was gone and Nolan was… wherever he was. William purposefully low contact for self-preservation; Amber a fond memory but painful like a bruise. And then Eve…

Mark had held you as tight as he dared.

“No, please. Don’t go. She was right. You… you do get it. The guilt and the blood and the - the impossible choices.”

The most powerful healing abilities in the world. You could save just about anyone as long as their head was still attached. Properly fueled and with enough rest, you could save thousands at a time but every choice was a hard one. You had to decide how and where you used your powers. Saving one possibly meant letting several others die. Every time.

He cried. He missed Eve. He loved her so, so much. Would have died for her.

But whenever he beat the odds, survived the impossible, lived up to being Invincible… it was because he couldn't abandon you to loneliness.

It wasn't one thing that changed. It was the slow evolution of time, trauma, propping each other up when one stumbled. The natural culmination of being something closer than friends, closer than family.

Glances that communicated conversations. Reaching into empty space and knowing the other would meet you there. Working not just around each other but with each other in silence. Shared tears, shared exhaustion, shared responsibility.

Knowing that he wasn't alone on that pedestal. That you were right there with him, and if you fell from it, you would fall together. That he'd catch you before hitting the bottom, and you'd find a safe place to land.

You used to hold his hand.

The lifeless thing in his grip now doesn't hold back. It's like a mannequin. Stiff, waxy, cold. The warmth is gone. The implicit, unspoken understanding is gone.

He barely recognizes you. They've kept you in a gown, an awful bleached white thing that ties in the back. The hem has ridden up enough to see the edge of a clear bandage, protecting neat squares of missing tissue from the meat of your thigh. An IV stint is still taped in the crook of your elbow. He can feel your spine and ribs poking his arm.

Your face is gaunt, sunken, ashy. Lips cracked and dry. They shaved your head. Shaved a lot of you, it looks like, for sterile access points and to keep adhesive in place.

No matter how hard he strains his ears, no matter where he presses his fingers, he can't find your heartbeat.

It was always impressive to him, how steady your pulse was even in the worst situations.

Medics aren't allowed to panic, you'd told him. We don't have the luxury of freaking out, even when we want to.

He doesn't plead. Because if there's any part of you lingering - a soul, a ghost, a few spare neurons stubbornly still firing - he doesn't want to ask you for something you can't give.

And if he begs you to come back, to breathe, to open your eyes, to hold his hand again, and you don't, then…

Then he has to face reality.

The scientists are still alive. He didn't get to indulge in revenge or retribution while trying to reach you because you'd taught him that even fractions of a second could make a difference.

And still, you're—

Someone's called a supervisor. Or maybe an executive. Someone with authority because Mark can hear the click of expensive shoes on tile.

“Look, we weren't hiding it. We just didn't want to present a problem without a solution ready to go,” the man is saying. Clipped, a little annoyed, like this is all some stupid inconvenience and not the end of the world. “But you can tell Stedman we have a way to stretch the efficacy of the specimen’s remaining tissue and—”

He never finishes the sentence.

You and Mark used to fly together, hand in hand. You could never be as fast as him but you'd let him tug you along, laughter lost in the wind. Now, your head lolls limp and grotesque over his bicep.

He crashes through the ceiling without preamble. Protects your body, your corpse, because it's been disrespected enough.

Cecil's eyes go wide, all the color draining from his face.

“Jesus, Mark. Is she…?”

“They experimented on her,” he says. His voice is shaking, cracking down the middle, falling apart because you're not there to keep him all together anymore. “They were using her for samples. They called her a specimen.”

“I'm— I'm sorry, kid.” And he sounds like he means it. Maybe he is sorry, but not for you or Mark. “I know how much she meant to you. To all of us. This is…”

Mark can go weeks without air but he feels like he's suffocating.

“I want her cremated,” he chokes out, “that's what she wanted too. So she can— so no one else will—”

Mark's mask and goggles are still on, and his chin is tilted down towards you but his eyes are up. Watching. Dissecting.

Something flickers across Cecil's face. He's quiet for half a second too long. Not noticeable to any human but for Mark it's slow motion.

“Of course,” Cecil lies, hands tucking in his pockets.

“I want to be there with her.”

“I don't think that's a good idea, Mark. You're not—”

“She's been alone this whole time, Cecil. I'm not going to abandon her again.”

If Cecil had let it go, if he had just given Mark this one last thing, maybe. Maybe Mark would have… not forgiven him, no, but sat quietly in his own grief. For a little while.

But Cecil straightens his spine and squares his shoulders. Says, “Mark, she can still save people. That's what she would've wanted, if she knew it was possible after her death.”

Cecil should have spent more time and energy on Mark's powers than yours. Tearing through the Pentagon is horrifically easy. Half of it is gone before he actually gets his hands on Cecil.

“Why?” Mark spits, shaking him by the remains of his suit. “Why did you let them?!”

“I didn't want to, kid, but look at the math,” Cecil coughs. That same frustrated tone when he thought Mark was being too idealistic. Like he's the only one seeing reality clearly. “She wasn't a hero like you or the Guardians, she was part of recovery. Preventing disasters by keeping you all in top shape is better than trying to salvage remains, isn't it?”

Mark grits his teeth hard enough to crack diamonds. “Then fucking ask her.”

“I did. She refused to work for the GDA beyond auxiliary support. It wasn't reliable or efficient.”

Mark thinks of you, shutting off your phone to finally sleep after days scrambling through wreckage. You, choosing to get an entire hospital through a blackout rather than go to the Pentagon to heal just Rex and Rae after the Lizard League.

“Live Corp. was able to synthesize millions of samples from a small fraction of her tissue, immediately available to dispense.”

Mark was going to take you somewhere. Quiet, peaceful, unreachable. A cabin or an island or something. Wanted to just have time with you, recover with you, exist with you.

You'd looked at him with so much weight when he'd proposed it. Something so much heavier than love.

Then Cecil called. He needed Mark in space.

One more mission, you said, lips brushing the meat of his thumb, and then we can have something just for us.

It was the last time he spoke to you.

He gets more details from Donald, whose machine body held up a little better against Mark's fracturing composure.

Live Corp. had the technology, specialists, resources to make the most use of your body's innate healing factor. As long as the GDA looked the other way, they would be priority customers with dibs on any new products and a private reserve of miracle cures derived from you.

Maybe GDA scientists could have done it, but keeping you on-site for experimentation with Invincible on the roster was too risky.

As if the whole conspiracy wasn't an elaborate planetary suicide in the first place.

People always thought you were a pure altruist. Assumption based on the nature of your powers. You weren't. Kind? Yes. Compassionate? Yes. Selfless? Not by a long shot.

“If I die, you gotta avenge me,” you'd told him, watching Johnny Wicker one movie night. “Like, don't let anybody try to tell you that killing them would make you just as bad or any of that nonsense.”

He'd laughed. “You wouldn't want me to be the better person?”

You had considered, then shrugged. “I mean, do what you want, I'd be dead anyway. But if bad guys fuck up all the good guys, what's left, you know?”

He wonders if this is what you meant but like you said, he can do what he wants now that you're gone.

The entire planet used you. Treated you like nothing more than a walking first aid kit, a miracle on legs. All of humanity took advantage of you, felt entitled to your kindness. Acted as if your life should be spent in service of theirs.

Viltrum is their recompense. And a means to an end. If there's anywhere, any way he can get you back, it'll be out there in the stars.

His hands are always cold. Feel disconnected from his body. Can't keep them still with nothing to hold them down. Humans call him sick, his Viltrumite soldiers think he is unwell. They're right.

The ringing landline drags you kicking and screaming (figuratively for now) back to the land of the living. You surface from the drool-soaked hotel sheets like a breaching whale, sucking air and flopping with abandon. The phone keeps ringing.

"Wh'huh?" you grunt into the receiver.

"Up and at 'em, sunshine." The devil sounds like he needs a cigarette. "I'm calling in that favor."

It's been two days.

You say as much - or more accurately, slur it into the room phone. Shame on you for forgetting to rip the thing out of the wall. Unfortunately, words like "recovery" and "grace period" are blasphemy in the Cecil Stedman Bible, and everyone is an apostle whether they like it or not.

"I have an assignment I need you on," he says.

Considering how widely disliked he is, you'd think he'd stop using such personal words as "I" and "me" to convince people to do things. Then again, Cecil doesn't make requests, he just informs people about things they dont know they're doing yet. Including you now, because you said the words "I owe you one" out loud.

"'M not-"

"A hero," he interrupts, "I know. I'm not asking you to fight anyone."

You blink hard, trying to process that there's a boundary he's respecting. Wonders never cease.

"This is more of a supervisor role," he says into your cautiously optimistic silence.

Whatever it is, you doubt it'll be as simple as he's making it sound. It never is. Opting out isn't on the table this time though. You sigh and rub feeling back into your face with your free hand.

"Fine."

"Donald is in the lobby with coffee."

Now that's a hero.

It looks like a hurricane swept through downtown chicago. For all intents and purposes, one did. Typhoon, a C-tier villain, escaped during prisoner transport.

Windows shattered, cars smashed, signs ripped from posts, and all the sharp debris swept up in flood waters. Light poles and traffic signals are bent at precarious angles, cracking pavement like weeds pulled up in a garden. Civilians huddle on the rooves of sixteen-wheelers and fire escape platforms, shivering and windswept. Casualties were few, but they weren't zero.

An A-tier level of damage in a little less than twenty minutes.

Responsibility for the destruction doesn't rest solely on Typhoon's shoulders. The heroes - no, amateurs that responded are also to blame.

Disorganized. Sloppy.

Four of them, a formal and recognized team, and this was the best they could do?

"—lucky the Immortal was nearby to clean up your mess! I should bench you until you relearn the basics."

Cain, sensing a nonverbal cue, crosses his arms in agreement, frowning at the Teen Team.

Rex is in the back of an ambulance for lack of other dry places to sit, a wad of gauze pressed to his split eyebrow. His pupils are two different sizes but that doesn't stop him from rolling his eyes.

Kate's arms are crossed tightly, looking anywhere but Cecil or the destruction. She's favoring one leg and hiding it poorly but she snapped at the last EMT that approached her.

Eve, for her part, seems genuinely contrite at least, casting sheepish glances at the ruined city streets with her chin tilted towards her chest. Though she's not badly injured, she sports scrapes and growing bruises just like the other humans.

Robot, of course, has had almost no reaction to anything at all.

"We did our best, man!" Rex complains, slurring a little. "What're we s'posed to do, fight the wind?"

Cecil scowls harder, hands on his hips.

"You're supposed to do your goddamn jobs," Cecil shouts, "you do whatever it takes. This is an embarrassment."

The three teenagers jerk as if they've been struck, eyes wide and shoulders high.

It's harsh, perhaps even unnecessarily hurtful, but this outcome was unacceptable. Cain doesn't follow news of the next hero generation but he knows that Teen Team normally operates at a level impressive for their ages. Perhaps that has made them cocky, or reckless, and that's why this situation got so out of hand. It could be excused as a simple folly of youth if they were normal teenagers, but they're not normal. They're heroes, and arrogance can cost lives. It did cost lives this time.

"Uh helloooo, we got Typhoon, didn't we?" Rex scoffs.

Eve quickly steps in front of him. "What he's trying to say is that Typhoon was hard to beat but we did the best we could."

Cecil opens his mouth, only for a sharp voice to crack through the air like lightning.

"Teen Team."

It's the type of tone that makes the hindbrain sit up and pay attention. Every one of them— even Robot — straightens their spine. At Cain's side, Cecil sighs, closes his eyes, and pinches the bridge of his nose. Mutters something that sounds like "oh hell."

Cain turns towards the voice.

A woman floats down from the sky, dressed in thick black cargo pants and a long-sleeved compression shirt. A reflective harness loops around her torso and a pristine white caduceus is printed on each arm.

Cain recognizes her from countless disasters and catastrophes, though he can't remember ever speaking to her. She has the most powerful healing abilities in the world, living first-aid.

"Kit…" Cecil begins. But he steps back to make room for her to land between them and the teen heroes.

"Cecil," she replies, clipped. Her eyes flick to Cain. "Immortal."

Then she spins on her heel. Despite the initial reaction, Eve softens and steps aside without haste.

"Let's see it," Kit says to Rex, warmer.

He winces. "Its not a big deal, ma…"

Ma?

Despite his protest and squirming, he leans in when she reaches for his face and drops his hand readily. The split in his brow is sizeable, still bleeding sluggishly despite steady pressure for several minutes now.

"Helluva knock," Kit says mildly, "what was it?"

"Trashcan," Kate interjects just as he opens his mouth.

"A and B conversation," Rex snaps, "so C yourself out!"

Kit clicks her tongue, hand hovering over his head. Gentle golden light blooms from her palm. Right before their eyes, the cut in his eyebrow seals without so much as a scar.

Rex blinks a couple times, then shakes his head.

"Oh shit, I thought Kate had a duplicate just chilling this whole time," he muses.

Kit pivots towards Kate but angles her head at Cecil.

"Why were you yelling at my kids?"

"Have you looked around?"

She blinks at him, slowly. The same golden light flows towards Kate. Some of the tension in her shoulders eases, brow unfurrowing.

"Eve?" Kit asks.

"It was Typhoon. We've never fought them before but… I don't know, something seemed off. Maybe it was just more than we could handle…"

She looks more shamefaced now than she did when Cecil was berating them. Kit makes a considering noise.

"Kate? Rex?"

"We should've called for backup," Kate offers reluctantly.

"I thought Typhoon was supposed to be a loser? We fight tougher guys in the Lizard League."

It was arrogance, then. They expected an easy foe and failed to perform with the appropriate effort. Cain won't pretend he's never done the same, but that doesn't excuse their mistakes.

"You got cocky," Cecil states.

Mouths open, ready to respond, but Kit's even voice cuts across them all with ease.

"Rex." She waits until he looks at her. Cain has only just met him, but the way his mouth twists seems uncharacteristic. "Is this a villain you would normally beat easily?"

There's one beat of silence. Two. He holds her gaze.

"Yeah."

Kit turns back to Cecil, and by proxy, Cain. She projects the kind of calm that most leaders aspire to, the eye of a storm. She doesn't say a word, but the message is clear.

Cecil sighs. "Come on, Kit, they're—"

"After running an analysis on collated battle data, it does appear that Typhoon's power output was significantly higher than usual," Robot states.

Cecil frowns, concern flickering across his face as he processes this information.

"How much higher?"

"2.5 times higher than the previous highest data point for damage radius and intensity."

Kit, gently untangling bits of debris from Eve's hair, doesn't gloat. Rex, still seated behind her, does.

"Something's wrong with Typhoon," she concludes. "Where are they now?"

Cecil's eyes narrow. "In custody, headed to the Pit."

She hums. "I'd like to take a look at them."

"You think it's biological?"

"I think that's a place to start." She turns back to Teen Team. "Go home, get cleaned up, have a debrief ready when I get back."

Eve and Kate nod.

Rex groans, "I just wanna nap."

"Nap when your report is done. Now, get."

She waits until they're out of earshot before casting Cecil a look caustic enough to burn.

"Don't call them embarrassments again."

The "or else" hangs in the air, unspoken. Cain isn't certain what the "or else" implies though. She is a stringent non-combatant; her work is stellar but only begins after a battle has concluded. He's never seen her so much as throw a punch.

He's still glad she didn't aim those words, or that look, at him. Cain has been around long enough to know that two people to never make enemies of are physicians and cooks.

"Noted," Cecil replies, flat.

Kit spins on her heel and walks towards the nearest SUV, waving at Donald with a smile.

Cain stares after her. She looks… very good in her uniform.

"Why was she—"

"I asked her to mentor Teen Team as a favor," Cecil explains, then adds in a grumble, "didn't realize they'd imprint on her like ducklings."

Cain wasn't aware she had a working relationship with the GDA (or Cecil, at least) at all until now. For someone that's been first on the scene in the wake of Gaurdians' battles and other catastrophes for decades now, there's a lot he doesnt know about her.