#angstom

Dust motes, like tiny, restless spirits, danced in the slivers of weak sunlight filtering through grimy, cracked windows.

Y/N lay on the remnants of a broken bed frame, springs jutting out like the ribcage of some forgotten beast, the torn mattress a testament to the room's violent history.

Distant explosions, muffled thunder in the ruined landscape, vibrated through the weathered walls of the abandoned house. Smoke, thick and ashen, billowed against a sky the color of a bruised plum, visible through a jagged crack in the half-drawn curtains.

Consciousness returned slowly, surfacing from murky depths. The room spun, a dizzying mix of faded floral wallpaper, cracked plaster, and overturned furniture. Her muscles screamed, throbbing pain that spoke of brutal battles and forced, rapid healing.

The memory of Lensless's hand around her throat, the crack of her fist against his face, the desperate grasp of the variants as she faltered, and Omni's tear-streaked face flashed behind her eyelids.

A ragged breath shattered the oppressive quiet.

Y/N's eyelids fluttered open, her gaze snapping to the source of the sound. Her pupils dilated, adjusting to the dim light, and her heart clenched.

Lensless Mark sat against the far wall, a prisoner in his own skin. Heavy, industrial-grade chains, thick as her wrist, wrapped around his body, binding him from shoulders to ankles. The metal crisscrossed his torso in an intricate, punishing web.

Lensless Mark sat against the far wall, a prisoner in his own skin. His luchador-style mask covered only the upper half of his face, the angular, sharp-edged thing that framed his eyes like a weapon, leaving his jaw, mouth, and cheeks fully exposed.

A landscape of mottled bruises bloomed across those bare cheekbones. One eye was swollen shut, the skin around it a bruised purple-black, a testament to the brutal beating he'd endured. A trail of dried blood ran from his split lip down to his chin. His single visible eye that wasnt swollen shut burned with a fierce intensity that belied his vulnerable position.

All souvenirs from the other variants' fury after his attempt on her life.

Y/N's muscles tensed, her instincts screaming for defense. Her fingers curled into half-fists. But Lensless Mark wasn't lunging. He wasn't attacking. He was simply watching, his gaze a silent, smoldering question.

"Well, well," he drawled, his voice a low, gravelly rasp, that single eye glinting with a mix of sardonic humor and barely contained rage. "Sleeping beauty finally graces me with her presence."

His nostrils flared slightly, his upper lip curling into a brief, almost involuntary sneer. "Wonderful performance back there, by the way. Real fuckin' heroic."

The sarcasm dripped from his words, but beneath it, Y/N detected an undercurrent of something else, a flicker of curiosity, perhaps, or grudging respect.

The chains rattled softly as he shifted.

"Your Marks were... thorough," he remarked, his one good eye tracking her movements as she examined him. "Bunch of overprotective bastards."

Y/N arched an eyebrow, her lips pressing into a thin, hard line. "You tried to kill me."

"Fair point." A sharp, unexpected laugh escaped him, a sound that was part genuine amusement, part something darker, almost feral. "But where's the fun in killing you quickly?"

Ignoring him, she traced the pattern of the restraints with her gaze. They weren't just simple bindings, but a message from the other variants: You are not to be trusted.

Each link, custom-forged and precision-engineered, spoke of a desperate need to contain someone with superhuman strength. Viltrumite's handiwork.

"Comfortable?" she asked, her voice raspier than she expected, her throat dry and raw.

Lensless Mark let out a sharp bark of laughter, tilting his head back to expose the bruised column of his throat. "Oh, absolutely. Nothing says 'five-star accommodation' like being chained up by my multiversal doppelgängers."

Despite the humor, tension radiated from him like heat.

"They could have killed me," he said suddenly, his shoulders pulling against the chains as he leaned forward. "But no. Chained me up like some... pet." The last word dripped with contempt, his teeth bared in a brief, almost involuntary snarl.

Y/N shifted, wincing slightly as a jolt of pain shot through her side. The memory of Lensless's fist connecting with her wound, of the variants' hands catching her as she fell, was still vivid.

Her body ached with the particular exhaustion of someone who had pushed past their limit and was now paying for it.

"Why didn't you try to escape?" she asked, her head tilting to one side, her eyes narrowing as she studied him.

Lensless Mark's lips curled—part smirk, part snarl. "And go where, exactly? I'm stuck in THIS universe. THIS world!" His good eye widened with emphasis, veins standing out on his neck as anger flashed across his face.

The silence stretched between them, thick with unspoken history. Y/N's fingers traced absent patterns on the worn fabric of her partially torn suit.

Her eyes continued to study Lensless Mark, searching for something beyond the surface bravado.

"You want to know about the GDA," she said, her voice flat, devoid of inflection. It wasn't a question.

Lensless Mark's eyebrow arched, genuine surprise flickering across his face before his characteristic smirk smoothed it over. He'd been careful not to ask, not to show interest. "How did you—"

"Your jaw tightened when I mentioned it," she said simply. "And you've been watching me since I woke up."

A sharp laugh escaped him. "Well. Aren't you observant."

A humorless smile touched her lips. "I learned to read people fast. The ones at the GDA who telegraphed what they wanted were always the most dangerous."

Her gaze grew distant, her eyes unfocusing as they fixed on a point beyond the room's peeling wallpaper. The chains binding Lensless Mark seemed to fade into background noise as memories surfaced, sharp, jagged things that cut like broken glass.

"They didn't just experiment," Y/N began, her voice taking on a hollow flatness that spoke of practiced self-preservation. "Experimenting implies scientific method. What they did? That was torture disguised as research."

Lensless Mark remained silent, his good eye fixed unblinkingly on her face.

Her fingers unconsciously traced a thin, barely visible scar along her forearm, one of many hidden beneath her suit. "Viltrumite physiology is... complex. Unpredictable. The GDA wanted to understand its potential. To create something controllable. Something they could weaponize and use."

Her jaw clenched tight, the words costing her something to say out loud.

"They'd inject me with different variants of Viltrumite blood," she continued. "Mark Grayson... Nolan Grayson... and they watched how my body responded. Rejected. Adapted. Died. And then brought back." Her laugh this time was closer to a sob, her eyes glistening briefly before she blinked the moisture away. "Regeneration was both a blessing and their favorite torture method."

Lensless Mark's eye had lost its sardonic gleam. Something darker moved behind it. A flicker of something that might have been empathy, quickly buried beneath his trademark cynicism.

"Sounds fun," he muttered, but the words lacked his usual bite, his gaze dropping momentarily to the floor.

Y/N's head snapped toward him, her eyes blazing with an intensity that made the air between them seem to shimmer. "Fun? You think this was fun?"

The room felt smaller suddenly. Lensless Mark went very still, the way people do when they've said something they can't take back and aren't sure what's coming next.

Her hands, which moments ago had been trembling slightly, now looked frighteningly steady. The same hands that had broken his nose, that had fought back when every odd was stacked against her. The same hands that had survived countless GDA experiments.

"I'm not looking for your pity," she said quietly, her chin raised, her eyes hard as flint. "I'm telling you so you understand. I'm not a victim. I'm a fucking survivor... And the only one who lived out of every one of their goddamn experiments."

A long moment passed.

The dust motes continued their silent dance. Outside, the world remained in total destruction, unaware of the complex drama unfolding in this forgotten room.

Finally, with a heavy grunt of pain, Y/N pushed herself up from the broken bedframe. Her legs trembled beneath her weight, muscles quivering with the effort of supporting her still-recovering body.

Each step toward Lensless Mark sent shockwaves of pain through her healing tissues, but she refused to show weakness, her face a mask of determination.

Lensless Mark raised a brow as she approached, his one good eye tracking her movement with predatory attention. The dark swelling around his other eye had begun to recede slightly, the accelerated Viltrumite healing already at work.

Her fingers hovered near the industrial-grade chains, tracing their intricate welding without touching. The metal gleamed coldly in the dim light, each link casting its own small shadow. She could see the other variants in the work, the precision of it, the overkill of it.

This wasn't just restraint. This was a message.

"Admiring the jewelry?" Lensless drawled, that single eye glinting with humor. His chest rose with a deep inhale, nostrils flaring slightly.

"No..." Y/N's lips quirked, her eyes dragging over him slowly, deliberately, like she was appraising something she'd found at the bottom of a trash heap. "I'm just trying to work out which one of them hit you hardest. Whoever it was, I'd like to shake their hand."

"Cute," Lensless Mark retorted, the single visible eye rolling with exaggerated disdain, jaw tightening just slightly before he smoothed it over. "Real original. You want a medal, or just a participation trophy?"

"Just the answer," she said, already turning away from him and back to the chains.

Her fingers, light as a feather, traced the cold metal of the chains. Not sympathy, but a curiosity drove her touch. She tested the links, feeling for weaknesses, gauging the resistance they would offer to her enhanced strength.

"You want out?" The question, deceptively casual, carried the weight of unspoken conditions.

A sharp, barking laugh echoed off the cracked walls. "Are you serious right now?" He leaned forward, the chains biting into his bruised flesh, a low growl rumbling in his chest. "Yes, I want out. Obviously. What kind of stupid question is that?"

Y/N arched a brow, a flicker of a smirk playing on her lips. "Conditions, then."

"Of course," he drawled, leaning back against the wall like a man with all the time in the world despite the chains still wrapped around him. The corner of his mouth pulled up. "Let's hear it then."

"A pinky promise." She extended her smallest finger, the gesture absurdly childish in their brutal reality. For a fleeting moment, a hint of something softer, almost playful, flickered across her face.

Lensless Mark stared, his jaw slack, the single visible eye widening in disbelief. "A what?"

"You heard me." The playful glint vanished, replaced by a hard, unwavering stare. "Pinky promise you won't immediately try to kill me, or anyone else, when I release you."

A startled laugh burst out of him, genuine enough that it seemed to surprise even him. "You're out of your mind," he said, shaking his head slowly. "An actual, certifiable lunatic."

"Promise, or stay chained."

He looked at her extended pinky for a long moment, something unreadable shifting behind his eye. Then, slowly, with the air of a man deeply questioning every decision that had led him to this moment, he extended his own.

"Pinky." He hooked it around hers. "Fuckin'." He held her gaze. "Promise."

Their smallest fingers locked, an absurd pact sealed in the heart of a shattered world. The brief contact, surprisingly warm, lingered a beat longer than either of them acknowledged.

Y/N dropped her eyes to the chains, then crouched down in front of him, close enough that he could have reached her if his arms weren't bound. She didn't seem particularly concerned about that.

"Hold still," she said quietly.

Her fingers closed around a link, thumbs tracing the metal's cold, unyielding surface. She felt for weaknesses, pressure points where the metal might yield. Her grip tightened, the chain feeling like a throat beneath her fingers.

She braced herself, Viltrumite strength coiling through her arms as she applied pressure, slow at first, then with everything she had.

The chain snapped with a crack.

Metallic links scattered across the worn floorboards, skittering into the shadows at the edges of the room. Y/N was already moving to the next one before the echo died.

Lensless Mark watched, his eye narrowed, lips parted slightly. The bruising around his socket had faded further, the skin pulling back toward something recognizable. "Impressive," he muttered. "Didn't know they programmed lockpicking into their little science project."

Her hands stilled. She looked up at him, and whatever was in her eyes made him close his mouth.

"I learned a lot in the GDA," she said quietly. "Survival wasn't a choice. It was the only thing left."

She turned back to the chains. Another link gave way, the metal groaning before it twisted apart, softer than the first, like it had already decided to quit.

Outside, the world continued its fiery death throes. Distant screams and explosions painted a hellish soundscape, a constant reminder of the multiversal war raging beyond their sanctuary. The other variants—Omni, Mohawk, Sinister—remained locked in their negotiations with Angstrom Levy, their voices a distant, indistinct rumble.

"So," Lensless Mark drawled, breaking the silence, his head tilting to one side, "you're not curious why they left me here? Chained up like some... personal project?"

A flicker of humor touched Y/N's lips. Her fingers moved with methodical precision, each link yielding to her strength. "Maybe they thought you needed a timeout." A soft giggle escaped her, surprising even herself.

"A timeout?" His single eye narrowed, a muscle twitching in his bruised cheek. "Because chaining up a multiversal Mark Grayson variant is standard procedure."

"For you? Apparently yes."

Another chain fell, the metal ringing against the floorboards before going still. Y/N didn't look up from her work.

The silence stretched. Outside, something distant collapsed, another building giving up its fight against gravity. The sound rolled through the walls and faded.

"They beat the shit out of me." The snark was gone. Just the words, flat and bare. His gaze dropped to the floor, shoulders pulling inward slightly, like something in him had quietly deflated. "Not just a fight. A statement."

Her hands stilled on the chain.

She looked at him, really looked at him, the dim light catching the damage mapped across his face, the set of his jaw, the way he wasn't quite meeting her eyes.

"Because you tried to kill me." She stated the fact, not an accusation.

He didn't answer right away and for a moment she thought he was going to deflect, throw another sneer at her and shut the conversation down like he had every other time something got too close to real.

Then—

"Because you're a fucking clone." The words came out low and vicious, like he'd been holding them behind his teeth for a long time. "A disgusting imitation wearing her face."

Y/N's fingers froze on the chain. The room felt suddenly smaller. "What?"

He turned his face away from her, staring at the peeling wallpaper like it had personally offended him. The line of his jaw was rigid, a vein pulsing at his temple.

"Forget it."

"No." Her voice dropped, all the lightness gone out of it. Her grip tightened around the chain in her hands, knuckles whitening. "No more chains until you explain." She waited until he looked at her again. "You owe me that much."

"I don't owe you a single goddamn thing," he snarled, yanking forward against the remaining restraints hard enough that the chains bit deep into his skin. The metal held. Barely. His eye blazed, wild and cornered, the look of something that had been pushed into a space too small for it.

Y/N didn't move. Didn't flinch. Just held his gaze and waited.

The fight went out of him slowly, not all at once, but in increments. His shoulders dropped. His breathing changed. Something behind his eye shifted, cracked open just enough to let something through that wasn't rage.

"FINE."

The word exploded out of him, ricocheting off the cracked walls. He laughed after it, a broken, ugly sound that had nothing to do with humor.

"My Y/N was human." His voice cracked down the middle on the last word, splitting it open. "Just — human. Normal. She didn't have Viltrumite blood running through her, didn't have any of this—" he gestured at her, the movement sharp and contemptuous and somehow also devastated.

"She didn't need any of it. She was just..." He stopped. Swallowed hard. His head dropped back against the wall, eye closing briefly. "She looked exactly like you. Every detail. But she was real. Not built. Not engineered. Not some GDA science project stitched together and called a person." His voice had gone quiet now, which was somehow worse than the shouting. "She was perfect. And you're just—"

He stopped himself. Turned away again.

The unfinished sentence hung in the air between them, heavier than anything he could have said out loud.

Y/N didn't respond immediately. She let the silence sit, let it press against both of them with its full weight. Her fingers found the next chain and resumed their work, the soft groan of bending metal the only sound in the room.

She didn't look at him. Somehow, that seemed kinder than looking at him.

"And that's why you hate me," she said finally, her voice low and even. Not wounded. Just certain. "I'm her echo. But distorted. A version you deem wrong."

Lensless Mark said nothing.

She glanced up briefly, just enough to catch his expression, and what she saw there wasn't rage. It wasn't contempt. It was something far more uncomfortable than either.

His shoulders had dropped away from his ears, the rigid set of his spine softening incrementally against the wall behind him. The fight had gone out of him the way heat leaves a room, gradually, then all at once, until only the cold remained.

He looked, for just a moment, like someone who was very tired.

"I don't hate you," he said quietly. The admission seemed to cost him something. His eye dropped to the floor, jaw tight. "I hate that you exist. There's a difference."

Another chain gave way, the metal parting with a low groan that seemed to echo the mood of the room. Y/N set the broken links down carefully rather than letting them clatter.

"I know," she said simply.

She meant it without pity, and he seemed to understand that, because something in his expression shifted at the words, some last remaining wall losing its footing. His hands, freed incrementally as each chain fell, curled loosely in his lap. Not fists. Just hands.

The final chain hit the floor with a heavy, definitive clank. The sound rang out and then faded, swallowed by the dust and the silence.

He was free.

Neither of them moved for a moment. The room felt different without the chains filling it, emptier, and somehow more charged for it. Like the space left behind by something loud.

Lensless Mark slowly brought his arms forward, rolling his wrists with a grimace. The skin there was raw and chafed, deep red lines pressed into the flesh where the metal had bitten hardest.

He prodded at the bruising across his torso with the detached assessment of someone taking inventory of damage, wincing sharply at one spot near his ribs before schooling his expression back into something neutral. He flexed his fingers, then his arms, reacquainting himself with the simple fact of being unrestrained.

Y/N watched him without pretending she wasn't.

He caught her looking. Of course he did.

The shift was subtle at first, just a change in the quality of his stillness, something predatory sliding back into place beneath his skin like a blade being drawn slowly from a sheath.

He looked up at her through his lashes, and the man who had just spoken about his dead Y/N with a cracked voice was gone, packed away somewhere she wasn't meant to see.

"Well," he purred, the word rolling off his tongue like something dangerous dressed up as something easy. His voice had dropped to just above a whisper, a smile pulling at the corner of his mouth that had no warmth in it whatsoever. "About that pinky promise..."

Y/N didn't step back. She wanted to, her body was already registering the shift in him, muscles tightening, weight redistributing to the balls of her feet without conscious instruction. Every instinct she had was suddenly paying very close attention.

But she didn't move.

She held his gaze instead, her expression giving him nothing.

"You promised," she said. Flat. Certain. Like a woman reminding someone of a debt she fully intended to collect.

His bruised face transformed, the fleeting vulnerability vanishing, replaced by a cold, calculating mask, as he slowly, deliberately, rose to his full height.

The broken chains lay scattered around his feet. The afternoon light caught each link, casting distorted, elongated shadows across the worn floorboards.

Lensless Mark rolled his shoulders, his neck cracking with a satisfying pop as he tilted his head from side to side. His single good eye never left Y/N's face. The swelling around his other eye had receded further, revealing a sliver of iris that gave him an unsettling, lopsided gaze, like looking at something that wasn't quite finished healing and wasn't quite finished deciding what it wanted to do next.

He ran his tongue over his split lip, slow and deliberate, tasting copper.

"I did promise not to kill you," he whispered, taking a step forward that closed the distance between them. His boot crushed a chain link underfoot, the metal yielding with a dull crunch. "Immediately."

Y/N didn't flinch. Her feet remained rooted to the dusty floor, her weight subtly shifted to the balls of her feet, poised for action. Her chin lifted as she inhaled deeply, registering the scent of his sweat, blood, and something uniquely him.

Her eyelids lowered slightly, her gaze sharpening with focused intensity. "So, that's it?" Her voice, deceptively soft. "First taste of freedom, and you're already breaking your word?"

A harsh laugh reverberated through the room, devoid of mirth. It grated against the silence.

"My word?" Lensless Mark's chest expanded with a sharp inhale, the bruises on his torso shifting with each breath. "You dare speak of words and promises? That's rich."

Another step forward, the floorboard creaking beneath his boot.

"You pinky promised," she said.

He stopped.

Something crossed his face, there and gone so fast she almost missed it. Then he laughed, and this time it was different from the harsh sound before. Quieter. Reluctant. Like it had escaped without his permission.

"You're insane," he said. But he didn't take another step.

The silence between them stretched; outside, the distant sounds of the dying world continued, crumbling concrete, the low moan of wind through broken buildings. In here, there were only the two of them and the wreckage of the chains and whatever this was becoming.

"In my world," he said finally, his tongue touching his split lip like he was testing the words before he let them out, "the GDA took her too." His voice had dropped to something quieter than a whisper, the words falling between them like stones into still water. "But she didn't survive. She didn't become..." He gestured at her, the motion sharp and short, his jaw working. "...this."

The last word landed exactly the way he intended it to. Like something discarded.

Y/N held his gaze without blinking.

"I didn't ask to be their experiment," she said. Her hands curled at her sides, not quite fists. "I didn't choose this."

"No." He took a slow breath, his eye moving over her, not with desire, not with cruelty, but with something worse. Recognition. "But you're still here. Still breathing. Still standing in front of me wearing her face and her voice and everything she was except—" He stopped himself. His jaw tightened. "She would have died before she let them turn her into a weapon."

The words hit like a fist to the throat.

Y/N's chin lifted a fraction higher. "Maybe," she said quietly. "Or maybe she would have survived it the same way I did. By deciding that dying wasn't an option."

Something flickered in his eye. Pain, maybe. Or fury. With him the two seemed to occupy the same space.

"But you thrived on it," he hissed, the bitterness carving deep lines around his mouth. "You became exactly what they wanted. And she'd have hated that." His voice dropped. "I hate that."

Before Y/N could respond, a bickering of angry voices erupted outside, distant but distinct.

Both occupants of the room froze, heads turning toward the window. The abandoned house suddenly felt paper-thin, the walls barely containing the sounds of the apocalyptic world.

"That's Mohawk," Lensless Mark muttered, his good eye narrowing as he cocked his head, listening. Something in his posture had shifted, the loose, predatory ease replaced by a coiled alertness that reminded her he was, beneath everything else, still a Viltrumite.

Y/N was already moving to the window. She pressed herself to the side of the grimy glass, fingers curling around the peeling windowsill, wood crumbling softly beneath her grip.

The sky had darkened to a bruised purple-black, smoke spiraling upward from multiple points across the devastated landscape in lazy, indifferent columns.

Several blocks away, figures hovered in the haze, familiar silhouettes even at this distance. Sinister's black and yellow. Omni's red and white. The others ranged around them in a loose, tense formation.

And at the center of it all, a smaller figure. Bulbous head gleaming with sweat even from here. Portal drones orbiting him like mechanical satellites.

Angstrom.

"Something's happening," she breathed, her breath fogging the glass.

Lensless Mark materialized at her shoulder without a sound, close enough that she felt the warmth radiating off him before she registered his presence. He shouldered her aside with zero ceremony and pressed his face to the glass, one hand braced against the wall above her head.

"Well, well," he drawled, but the casualness was paper-thin, tension bleeding through every word. "Looks like the family reunion is getting heated."

The voices carried on the smoke-laden air, anger, threats, demands stacking on top of each other until they blurred into something that sounded less like negotiation and more like a countdown.

Y/N pulled back from the window. Her gaze moved across the room without meaning to, the broken chains, the splintered bedframe, the peeling wallpaper curling away from the walls like skin. A world coming apart at every seam.

She made her decision.

"We need to go there."

Lensless Mark's head turned toward her slowly, his expression cycling through surprise, disbelief, and then settling on something that was almost entertained. "We?" The word came out like she'd said something genuinely funny. "There's no 'we' here, sweetheart. I tried to kill you. Multiple times. Recently."

Y/N stepped into his space. Not aggressively, just enough that he'd have to actively step back to maintain distance, and she was fairly certain he wouldn't give her the satisfaction.

She was right.

"And yet here I am," she said, her voice quiet and even, "having just unchained you." Her eyes held his without blinking. "Something's happening with Angstrom. Something big enough to have all of them—" she gestured toward the window without looking away from his face, "—on the edge of doing something they can't take back. Don't you want to know what it is?"

His gaze flicked to the window despite himself, just for a second, before snapping back to her.

Then Mohawk's voice tore through the air outside, loud enough to rattle the cracked glass in its frame.

Lensless Mark's eye narrowed.

"I'd rather be anywhere but helping your little boyfriend squad," he sneered, his voice dripping with contempt even as curiosity flickered in his visible eye, warring with the hatred that had become his constant companion.

Y/N sensed the opening and pressed her advantage, closing the distance between them. The floorboards creaked beneath her careful steps. "They're not my boyfriends," she said, her voice dropping low. "They're using me to replace someone they lost. Just like you said."

The words landed exactly where she intended them to.

A subtle change rippled across Lensless Mark's features, his pupil dilated, something darkening behind his eye that he couldn't quite get ahead of fast enough to hide. His lips parted involuntarily, the slightest tremor passing through them before he pressed them back together.

"And if Angstrom gets what he wants," she continued, her gaze steady and unflinching, "we all lose. Including you." Her hand hovered near his bruised forearm, not quite making contact but close enough that he could feel the warmth radiating from her skin.

She let it sit there, that almost-touch, "You want revenge for your Y/N? Angstrom is the one who brought all of them here," she said, her voice steady. "Every variant. Every destroyed city. Every person dead in the crossfire. That's on him. He set all of this in motion."

Lensless Mark stared at her for a long moment, his jaw working beneath the skin. Something moved through his expression that he clearly had no interest in letting her see, and she was kind enough, or tactical enough, not to name it.

"Fine." The word came out like it had been dragged from somewhere deep and unwilling. "Just fine." He said it again, quieter, like he was convincing himself as much as her. "But this doesn't make us allies. This doesn't make us anything."

Y/N's smile appeared briefly—genuine despite its fleeting nature, a flash of relief that vanished as quickly as morning dew under a harsh sun. "I wouldn't dream of it."

Without further conversation, she moved to the window with fluid, purposeful strides. The hinges protested with a rusty screech as she pushed it fully open, the rusted sound slicing through the heavy silence hanging over the room.

Cool evening air rushed in, carrying with it the unmistakable scent of destruction, smoke and dust intermingling with the faint, metallic tang of blood.

Y/N paused at the threshold, glancing back once at Lensless Mark. Her expression remained unreadable in the fading light. Then she stepped onto the windowsill and launched herself skyward, her body cutting through space.

Lensless Mark watched her disappear, his fingers curling into fists at his sides.

He stood motionless for a heartbeat, just long enough to mutter a string of creative curses under his breath, before following her lead.

They soared above the devastated landscape, twin shadows against the darkening canvas of the sky.

The city sprawled beneath them in ruins, buildings reduced to skeletal frameworks, streets split open like wound-like gashes across the face of the earth. Bodies of fallen civilians painted red patterns on the ground below, while fires burned unchecked in several districts, their orange-yellow flames serving as beacons in the gathering gloom.

Y/N maintained a slight lead, her body positioned to minimize wind resistance, arms extended at her sides. Her hair streamed behind her, dancing and whipping in the turbulent currents.

Lensless Mark kept pace a few feet behind and to her right, his movements marginally less fluid, the grace in his flight hampered by injuries that refused to be ignored. His face remained locked in a grimace of concentration, jaw muscles bunching as he clenched his teeth against the pain radiating through his body with each powerful thrust through the air.

They approached the gathering of variants with caution, using the smoke-filled sky as natural camouflage.

Above them, the confrontation unfolded above the remains of what had once been the Grayson family home, its once-welcoming structure now reduced to little more than ash and memory.

The variants hovered in a loose circle around Angstrom Levy, whose bulbous head glistened with a sheen of nervous sweat. His beady eyes darted between the assembled Marks, constantly calculating as he manipulated a constellation of portal drones that floated around the group.

Y/N signaled to Lensless Mark with a quick gesture, indicating a partially collapsed rooftop nearby. They descended in perfect silence, landing in a crouch behind a chimney stack that had somehow survived the destruction intact.

"—you promised us anything we wanted!" Mohawk Mark's roar cut through the evening air. "And now you want us to do more of your dirty work?!"

Angstrom's laugh bounced off the ruins surrounding them as his abnormally large head tilted backward. "I promised you new universes to conquer. But first, you need to complete your part of the bargain."

"We've done enough," Omni Mark grunted, his powerful frame rigid with barely contained violence. His fists clenched at his sides, the red material of his gloves straining across the knuckles as though struggling to contain the force within. "This world is in ruins, and we already lost half of us. Invincible's reputation is destroyed. It's time for you to pay up."

Sinister's laugh shattered the moment like broken glass, sharp and dangerous. "Or should we just rip that swollen head off your shoulders and be done with it?" His fingers flexed with deliberate slowness.

Emperor Mark floated slightly higher than the others, positioning himself with the natural authority of one accustomed to command. His voice cut through the tension. "You're stalling, Angstrom. That makes me wonder what you're hiding."

Phantom Mark hovered silently to the side, his full-face mask rendering his expression unreadable, but his body language, head tilted at a calculating angle, arms crossed over his chest, radiated cold assessment.

Prisoner Mark spat on the ground below, his scarred face twisting into a mean grimace that pulled at the puckered tissue crisscrossing his features. "If you think you can double-cross us after everything we've done—"

"Maybe he needs a reminder of who he's dealing with," Viltrumite Mark suggested, his voice a study in deceptive calm.

No Mask Mark's lips curled into a cruel smile. "I've been wanting to get my hands on you since day one."

From their vantage point, Y/N's fingers curled around the rough edge of the chimney, knuckles whitening with pressure as she observed the confrontation unfolding above them. Beside her, Lensless Mark's breathing had become a carefully measured rhythm.

"Something's wrong," she whispered, the words barely audible even to Lensless Mark's enhanced hearing. "Look at the drones."

Lensless Mark narrowed his eyes, scanning the scene below with the focused attention of someone who had learned the hard way to watch everything at once.

The variants were locked on Angstrom's face, all of them, every single one, too busy making their demands to notice what was happening behind them. And Angstrom was letting them talk. Encouraging it, even, his nervous energy and sweating brow playing perfectly into the role of a cornered man buying time.

Because that's exactly what he was doing.

One by one, small drones were rising silently into position behind each variant. No lights. No sound. Just slow, careful movement in the blind spots of eight men too angry to look anywhere but straight ahead.

"He's setting them up," Y/N breathed.

"Mm." Lensless Mark's eye hadn't moved from the drones. His voice was flat, almost bored, but his jaw had tightened. "The moment those things activate, a portal opens behind each of them. They won't even see it coming."

Y/N's gaze snapped to him. "You know his tech?"

His lips curled. "I've been through enough of his portals to know what it looks like right before one opens." A sardonic glint cut through his good eye. "You pick things up, sweetheart."

Their attention snapped back to the confrontation as Mohawk Mark's voice rose above the others, slicing through the cacophony with razor-sharp clarity.

"Enough talk!" Mohawk's voice cracked like a whip across the ruined skyline. "Either you give us what we want, or we tear you apart."

Angstrom's expression twisted — and then, almost imperceptibly, steadied. His hand slipped into his pocket with practiced smoothness, withdrawing a small remote. His thumb hovered over it with the quiet confidence of a man who had already won and was simply waiting for everyone else to catch up.

"I believe in contingency plans," he said, his voice carrying none of the nervousness from moments before. "You want new worlds to conquer? Fine. But not the ones you're thinking of."

Below, the variants were still watching his face. Still focused entirely on him, on his words, on the threat they represented. None of them looked back.

None of them saw the drones activate.

The green light came first — a sudden, simultaneous bloom behind each variant, portals yawning open at their backs with a low mechanical hum that was swallowed almost immediately by the sound of the variants' own shouting. By the time the energy crackled into full visibility, it was already too late to run.

"He's going to send them all away," Y/N breathed, her body coiling forward. "Right now—"

Lensless Mark's hand shot out, fingers closing hard around her wrist before she could move. His eye locked with hers, something unreadable flickering in its depths.

"Let him," he hissed, teeth bared in a feral grin that spoke of old hatreds and deeper wounds. "Less competition for me."

Y/N yanked her arm free, disgust flashing across her face. "They're you. All of them. Different versions, but still you."

"Exactly," he countered, leaning closer until she could count the flecks of gold in his irises. His visible eye narrowed, other still slightly swollen, while the corner of his mouth curled upward, revealing teeth stained with dried blood. "And I hate myself more than anyone."

Y/N's jaw tightened. She looked at Lensless Mark for exactly one more second, reading his face the way she'd learned to read every dangerous thing that had ever been put in front of her.

Then she looked back up at the variants.

"I'm going," she stated simply, her voice brooking no argument as her body tensed like a spring.

Lensless Mark's curse disappeared into the wind as Y/N launched herself skyward. Her body sliced through the smoke-laden air, arms extended at her sides. The bruised sky seemed to darken further around her as she rocketed toward the confrontation, like a living missile aimed at its heart.

Below, Lensless Mark's features contorted in frustration, nostrils flaring as he dragged in a ragged breath. The swelling around his injured eye had receded enough to allow him to squint through it, giving him a lopsided, dangerous gaze. With a growled string of profanities that would have made hardened criminals blush, he launched pushed away from the rooftop with enough force to cause the decaying structure to crumble further beneath his departure.

Y/N approached from below, using the smoke as cover, her eyes fixed on the scene above. The variants' attention remained locked on Angstrom, anger drowning out everything else, but not quite everything.

Angstrom's fingers danced across the remote with precision, sweat beading on his forehead as the drones behind each variant continued their slow, silent work. The green light was building now, subtle but steady, casting long shadows that crept across the backs of the assembled Marks.

"—tired of your games!" Omni Mark's voice cut through the electric hum below. His fingers curled into fists, tendons standing out like cords beneath his gloves. But his head tilted, just slightly, just for a fraction of a second, the way it did when something at the edge of his perception demanded attention.

He didn't turn around.

"You promised us new worlds!" Mohawk Mark snarled, teeth flashing in the sickly green glow. His rage had him completely, jaw bunching beneath his skin, eyes fixed on Angstrom's face.

He hadn't noticed the light at his back. Not yet.

Sinister Mark hovered slightly apart from the others, yellow cape billowing, shoulders hunched in the posture of a predator about to charge. A savage grin split his face beneath his black lenses. "You lying piece of shit," he hissed. "I'm going to enjoy peeling your skin off strip by strip."

But even as the words left his mouth, something made him pause. His head didn't turn, but his grin faltered, just barely. The green glow behind him had grown bright enough to cast his own shadow forward.

He was a half second from figuring it out.

"You'll get your worlds," Angstrom said, his voice pitching higher than he probably intended. His thumb found the central button of the remote. The nervous grimace on his face tried very hard to look like a smile and failed completely.

"And you'll die there."

His thumb came down.

The drones activated all at once, green light exploding into full brilliance behind each variant. The portals yawned open with a sound like tearing fabric, and for one suspended moment everyone froze , the variants finally turning, finally seeing, finally understanding what had been building at their backs while they'd been too angry to look.

It was Omni who spotted Y/N first. His head snapped toward her approach, eyes widening beneath his mask.

"Y/N, NO!" His arm shot outward, fingers splayed in desperate warning as he tried to alert her to the danger.

Angstrom spun.

His eyes found her a heartbeat later, hurtling toward him, momentum already committed, and something between panic and calculation crossed his face.

His finger jabbed at the remote, redirecting one of the drones away from its assigned variant and into her flight path. The device swung into position with a mechanical whir, green energy coalescing around it, a portal blooming open directly in her path.

Y/N's pupils contracted as she registered the trap too late. Her momentum carried her forward despite her best efforts, muscles straining as she attempted to alter her trajectory. The portal reached for her with invisible fingers, the air around it warping and distorting with dimensional instability.

Lensless Mark streaked through the air to her left, silent and fast. His hand dipped into a pocket, producing a shard of mirror, a makeshift weapon salvaged from the abandoned house.

The setting sun caught it at precisely the right angle, creating a blinding flash that struck Angstrom square in the eyes.

Angstrom's head jerked backward, eyelids squeezing shut against the sudden assault on his vision. His grip on the remote faltered, thumb slipping across its surface. The drone pattern wavered in response, creating a momentary opening in their formation.

Y/N seized the opportunity, twisting her body mid-flight to avoid the portal directly in her path. Her trajectory shifted, bringing her around behind Angstrom. The air parted before her fist as she drove it forward with all her strength, connecting with Angstrom's skull. The impact reverberated up her arm, bone meeting bone with a sickening crack that echoed across the ruined landscape.

Angstrom plummeted, his body spiraling toward the devastation below. Blood sprayed from his mouth while his fingers maintained their death grip on the remote, thumb pressing a sequence of buttons as he fell.

The variants roared in unison, breaking free of the destabilized portal net. They remained hovering above, their attention fixed on the spectacle below rather than pursuing Angstrom themselves. Their expressions ranged from surprise to excitement, but all shared one common element: bloodthirsty anticipation.

"Finish him!" Mohawk Mark shouted, fist pumping the air as he destroyed a nearby drone with his other hand. His eyes were wide and feverish, jaw set with the particular excitement of someone who had been itching for a reason to stop talking and start breaking things.

Prisoner Mark slammed two drones together between his palms, the metal crumpling like paper. "Don't let him escape!"

"Watch the drones!" Emperor Mark barked, his voice cutting through the chaos with the snap of someone accustomed to being obeyed.

No Mask Mark grinned savagely as he kicked one drone into another. They collided with a burst of green energy that scattered sparks across the ruins below. "Show him what happens when you cross us!"

The variants turned on the remaining drones with focused brutality, smashing them with fists and feet until the air rained green sparks and twisted fragments down onto the devastated landscape below.

Y/N dove after Angstrom, her body streamlined for maximum velocity. Wind roared past her ears, heart hammering against her ribcage as she accelerated downward.

Too late, she saw what he had done.

A new portal opened beneath him, a different green than the others, deeper, darker, like something had been wrong with it from the moment it formed. Deliberate. His thumb moved across the remote one final time, slow and certain, like a man signing his name.

Angstrom's eyes found hers as he fell toward it. Blood bubbled at his lips, spattering across his chin.

"Enjoy your trip," he said.

Y/N pulled up hard, muscles burning against her own momentum. Not hard enough. The portal expanded beneath him and kept expanding, swallowing him whole and then reaching upward with hungry, churning energy.

She couldn't stop.

Above her the variants had gone still, the last drones forgotten. Omni's arm shot out, fingers outstretched, too far away to matter. Lensless Mark hovered at the edge of the group, both eyes wide, his hand moving toward her before he'd apparently decided to move it.

The portal took her.

Meanwhile, one drone had drifted unnoticed into position behind Sinister Mark. His attention had been entirely on Y/N, his black lenses tracking her descent, body locked in place in a way that was almost unlike him. The drone activated quietly, a portal blooming open at his back.

"Son of a—"

· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·

The portal was nothing like the green ones. The sensation hit Y/N like every nerve in her body being pulled in opposite directions simultaneously, pressure, disorientation, colors that had no names pressing against the backs of her eyes until she thought her skull would give.

Then, abruptly, silence.

She hit the ground hard.

Her body absorbed the impact, but only just, dust and grit exploding outward from the point of contact. She lay still for a moment, cheek against alien soil, lungs working to remember their job.

Then she pushed herself up.

The landscape that greeted her was nothing like anything she had left behind. The sky hung low and sickly, a yellow-green that reminded her uncomfortably of infected tissue.

Three moons of different sizes and colors occupied that sky simultaneously, their overlapping light casting strange, layered shadows across the barren ground.

Jagged rock formations jutted from the earth in every direction, their surfaces catching the moonlight with an oily, iridescent sheen that suggested they were something other than simple stone.

She was a long way from home.

And moving across that landscape, massive shapes that defied classification.

Creatures composed primarily of teeth and claws and hunger, their bodies shifting and reforming with each lumbering step. Smaller, quicker things skittered between the giants, gleaming carapaces reflecting the eerie light of the alien moons.

Y/N pushed herself to her feet, muscles trembling with the effort.

Her heart hammered against her ribs as understanding harden in her mind. This wasn't just another Earth, another timeline. This was something else entirely.

She had been sent to a monster universe. A place where the laws of nature had taken a different, nightmarish turn.

The largest of the distant shapes changed direction, its hulking form now moving purposefully toward her.

The ground trembled beneath its approach, vibrations traveling through the soil and into Y/N's bones. Her muscles tensed in response, body automatically shifting into a defensive stance despite her exhaustion.

From three other directions, more creatures noticed her presence, their misshapen heads swiveling toward her with predatory interest. The smallest was still twice her height, its body a writhing mass of tentacles supporting what appeared to be a cluster of jawless mouths. It moved with surprising speed, covering ground in undulating lurches that ate up the distance between them.

Y/N's fists clenched at her sides, knuckles whitening as she prepared for a fight she wasn't sure she could win.

Four against one, each creature more nightmarish than the last, and her body still recovering from the dimensional transition, but she wouldn't wimp away from any fight.

The monsters closed in, forming a ring around her.

The largest towered at least thirty feet high, its body a grotesque fusion of insectoid and reptilian features. A cluster of milky eyes tracked her movements, pupils contracting to slits in the dim light. Its maw gaped open, revealing row upon row of serrated teeth arranged in concentric circles that extended deep into its gullet.

Y/N circled slowly, keeping all four creatures in her field of vision. Her breathing steadied, muscles warming as she gathered her remaining strength.

If this was to be her last stand, she would make it count.

The tentacled monster lunged first, appendages whipping toward her with the speed of striking snakes. Y/N leapt skyward, barely avoiding the attack. Her fist connected with what might have been the creature's head, the impact sending shockwaves up her arm. The monster stumbled but didn't fall, tentacles reconfiguring to maintain its balance.

Before she could press her advantage, the largest creature's arm shot out—a limb that seemed to elongate impossibly, ending in razor-sharp claws that raked across her back. Pain lanced through her body, hot blood soaking through the torn fabric of her suit. She spun in mid-air, teeth gritted against the agony, and delivered a retaliatory kick to the monster's forearm.

The third creature spat a stream of fluid that struck her left shoulder, eating through fabric and searing the skin beneath.

Y/N bit back a scream, the smell of her own burning flesh filling her nostrils. She dropped lower, trying to use the tentacled monster as a shield against further chemical attacks.

The fourth monster, a quadrupedal nightmare with a body structure suggesting both canine and arachnid heritage, circled warily, looking for an opening.

Y/N fought with everything she had. Her fists created craters in monstrous flesh, her kicks shattered what might have been bones.

But for every creature she staggered, another pressed forward. For every attack she evaded, two more connected.

Her stamina began to flag, muscles burning with exertion.

Blood ran freely from multiple wounds, her accelerated healing struggling to keep pace with the damage.

The monsters seemed to sense her weakening, their attacks becoming more coordinated, more precise.

A tentacle wrapped around her ankle, yanking her downward. She twisted, breaking free, but the motion left her open to the quadruped's charge.

Its multi-jointed limbs propelled it forward with startling speed, body colliding with hers in mid-air. They crashed to the ground together, Y/N pinned beneath its considerable weight.

Y/N struggled beneath the creature, muscles screaming with the effort as she tried to heave it off. Her vision began to dim at the edges, consciousness wavering as the other monsters closed in for the kill.

This was it. After everything she'd survived—the GDA experiments, the variants, Angstrom's traps—she would die here, torn apart by monsters in an alien dimension.

A dark blur streaked across her fading vision, moving too fast to track. The weight pinning her suddenly vanished, the quadruped monster flying backward as though struck by a wrecking ball.

The sound of impact echoed across the barren landscape, followed by an inhuman shriek of pain.

Y/N rolled onto her side, blinking to clear her vision. Through the haze of pain and exhaustion, she made out a familiar silhouette standing between her and the remaining monsters. Black and yellow, a cape catching the strange light of three moons, black lenses scanning the creatures with cold efficiency.

Sinister Mark.

His head didn't turn toward her, attention fixed on the creatures regrouping before him. His stance radiated aggressive confidence, arms hanging loose at his sides, shoulders squared beneath his suit. His yellow cape moved in the alien breeze, torn at one edge but no less dramatic for it.

"Stay down," he said, voice tight and clipped. Not a suggestion.

The largest monster roared, the sound vibrating through Y/N's bones. Sinister Mark didn't flinch. He tilted his head slightly, and a wide, savage grin split his face beneath his lenses.

"You can't touch what's mine," he laughed, the sound cold and genuinely delighted. "My turn."

What followed wasn't a fight. It was a massacre.

Sinister moved through the creatures with brutal efficiency, each strike placed exactly where it would do the most damage. No showboating, no wasted movement, just violence applied with the focused pleasure of someone who was very good at something they genuinely enjoyed.

His laughter punctuated every blow, bright and terrible against the alien silence.

Sinister's fist punched clean through the tentacled monster's central mass, the creature coming apart around his arm in a cascade of viscera. "Too easy!" He shook the gore from his yellow glove with a flick of his wrist, already turning toward the next one.

The acid-spitter never got its second shot. Sinister's hand moved faster than Y/N's eyes could follow, and the creature's head was simply no longer attached to its body. He kicked it toward another approaching monster without breaking stride. "Is that the best you've got?"

The quadruped limped back into the fray, its body already realigning from the earlier impact. Sinister met its charge head-on, both hands finding opposing sides of its horizontally-split face. The muscles in his arms and shoulders bunched visibly beneath his suit.

"Let me help you with that," he said pleasantly, and ripped outward.

The creature collapsed, twitching. Sinister floated over it, shoulders shaking with laughter, already focused on the last one.

The largest monster had stopped advancing. Its cluster of milky eyes tracked Sinister's movements with something that looked, for the first time, like wariness. It took a step back. Then another.

Sinister leapt, his body cutting upward against the sickly sky, cape snapping behind him. He came down on the creature's shoulders, hands finding its skull.

"Not so fast," he growled. "The fun's just starting." With a single, powerful motion, he twisted until something inside the monster gave way with a sickening crack that echoed across the wasteland.

The creature's legs buckled, its massive body crashing to the ground with earth-shaking force. Sinister rode it down, maintaining his position until the last tremor had passed through its dying form. His laughter echoed across the barren landscape, the sound filled with genuine pleasure at the destruction he'd wrought.

Silence descended over the battlefield, broken only by Y/N's labored breathing and the distant calls of other monsters, wisely keeping their distance after witnessing the fate of their brethren.

Sinister Mark turned toward her, his suit spattered with multicolored fluids that dripped slowly to the ground. He approached with measured steps, his silhouette black against the alien sky.

Despite having just saved her life, there was nothing reassuring about his advance.

Y/N pushed herself to a sitting position, teeth gritted against the protest of every injury she'd collected in the last ten minutes. Her eyes tracked him as he approached, searching the blank lenses of his mask for some hint of what came next.

He stopped in front of her and looked down.

"You look like shit," he said.

A smirk pulled at the corner of his mouth, cape settling around him as he tilted his head. The three moons caught his lenses, turning them into twin mirrors that gave her back her own battered reflection. "Waiting for a thank you? Or did I interrupt your suicide attempt?"

The laugh that escaped her was not entirely voluntary. It came out edged with pain and something close to hysteria, which probably said a lot about her current state. "I feel like shit too," she managed, pressing her hand against the gash across her ribs that pulsed insistently with every heartbeat.

The ground around them was a mess of dismembered creatures, their various fluids pooling in the shallow craters left by the fight, alien colors that had no business existing bleeding slowly into the barren soil.

Sinister's eyes moved across the carnage with the detached satisfaction of a man surveying completed work. Then he folded himself into a crouch beside her, the movement carrying the same fluid ease as the violence that had preceded it, like both were simply different expressions of the same thing.

His yellow gloves reached toward her face, unhurried, like she wasn't going to stop him and he already knew it. The leather caught on her skin as he tilted her chin upward, the contact transferring blood between them, her own crimson mixed with the iridescent fluids of the things he'd just torn apart with what could only be described as enthusiasm.

Y/N held still. Partly because moving hurt. Partly because something in the quality of his attention made her think that pulling away would only make it worse.

"I don't save people," he said.

The words came out quiet and almost conversational, which somehow made them land harder than if he'd snarled them.

His lower face was fully visible beneath the mask, and what it showed her was a grin spreading slowly from one corner of his mouth to the other, not warm, not reassuring, just deeply, genuinely pleased with itself. His teeth caught the dim light of the three moons.

"But these things," his thumb moved to her lower lip, the touch so light it almost didn't register, leaving a streak of crimson against her skin, "don't get to have all the fun with you."

He cocked his head, a small, curious tilt that sent a ripple through his torn cape. The yellow fabric caught the alien light and held it.

"Those idiots lost you," he continued, leaning into her space until his breath warmed her face, carrying the metallic tang of blood and the acrid scent of battle. "Their loss. My gain."

Y/N wrenched away from his grip. The sudden movement cost her, pain detonated through her battered body in a wave that stole the breath from her lungs.

A hiss escaped between her clenched teeth before she could stop it.

Her hand pressed instinctively to her shoulder where the acid burn throbbed beneath her torn suit, the edges of the fabric blackened and still faintly smoking.

She kept her jaw tight, her expression as controlled as she could manage, which wasn't very.

Sinister watched her do all of this with obvious interest.

Then he laughed, head thrown back, the sound erupting out of him high and untethered, echoing off the alien rock formations and coming back distorted and strange.

Like it belonged to this place.

"Still playing tough?" He shifted closer, unhurried, bringing with him the smell of the fight still clinging to his suit, sweat and blood and something underneath that was uniquely, unsettlingly him. Behind the black lenses something glittered, hungry and focused. His smile hadn't moved. "Reminds me of my Y/N."

The words hit differently than she expected.

Before she could decide what to do with them, his arms were already moving. One beneath her knees, one at her back, and then the ground was gone and she was against his chest with no memory of agreeing to it.

Her injured shoulder pressed into him. The gasp that escaped her was entirely involuntary.

Her fingers found the material of his suit and held on, vertigo and pain conspiring against her dignity.

Then he buried his face in her neck.

It wasn't violent or aggressive, it was slow, deliberate, his nose pressing into the curve where her neck met her shoulder as he drew in a long, deep breath. Like he was committing something to memory. Like he'd been wanting to do it for longer than the last five minutes and had simply decided that now was acceptable.

The sound he made was low and quiet, barely audible, somewhere between a sigh and something far more dangerous.

Y/N went completely still.

The pain, the alien landscape, the three moons overhead, all of it faded to background noise as heat flooded her face with humiliating speed. She was acutely, painfully aware of every point of contact between them.

"You—" she started.

"Shh." He didn't lift his head. His breath was warm against her skin, his voice muffled by her hair. "Give me a moment."

"Absolutely not—"

"There it is." He pulled back just enough to look at her, and whatever he saw on her face made his grin spread slow and satisfied across his mouth. His lenses reflected her flushed cheeks back at her in perfect detail. "You're blushing."

"I'm not," she said, which was such an obvious lie that she almost respected herself for attempting it.

"You absolutely are." He sounded delighted. "Fascinating."

"I have an acid burn and three cracked ribs—"

"And you're blushing." He said it like it was the most interesting thing that had happened all day, which given the day they'd had was genuinely offensive. "Don't worry. Your secret's safe with me."

"I hate you," she said, with as much dignity as she could manage while being cradled against his chest on an alien planet.

"No you don't." He sounded completely unbothered by the possibility either way.

His head tilted then, the teasing quality dropping out of his expression as his lenses moved over her face with something more clinical, taking inventory. The acid burn. The gash at her ribs. The way she was holding herself slightly wrong to compensate for the pain she wasn't admitting to.

"Hurts, doesn't it," he said. Not a question.

The corner of his mouth moved, not quite a smile, not quite a sneer, something in between that was probably worse than either. He shifted his hold on her, adjusting her weight against his chest with a carefulness that sat oddly against everything else about him.

"Pain means you're still alive." His lenses caught the moonlight briefly as he looked back out at the wasteland. "Be grateful."

Then he launched skyward without warning.

The acceleration drove her body hard against his, gravity making the decision her pride wouldn't. Her arms went around his neck on pure instinct, face pressing into his shoulder as the wasteland dropped away beneath them with nauseating speed. The wind hit immediately, cold and alien, whipping her hair across her face.

"Let me go," she said into his shoulder. Then she pulled back enough to find his lenses, the wind pulling her hair in every direction at once. "I mean it."

The laugh that came out of him rumbled through his chest and into hers where they were pressed together. "After all that trouble?" His grip adjusted, yellow gloves vivid against the torn fabric of her suit as he pulled her more securely against him. His voice dropped, almost conversational above the rush of wind. "Besides — those things down there heard all of that. They're already calling their friends."

Below, distant shapes moved across the wasteland with slow, deliberate purpose, drawn by the noise and the blood.

She didn't argue again.

Sinister adjusted course, angling toward a jagged rock formation that rose from the wasteland floor. A dark opening revealed itself at its base as they descended, a cave mouth, shadow pooling thick and deep within it.

He landed with easy precision and ducked inside without breaking stride, her still held against his chest like something he'd decided to keep.

"Home sweet home," he said, and she could hear the smile in it.

She could still feel the warmth of his breath on her neck.

She chose not to think about that.

· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·

☆ Okay, I really hope you guys enjoyed this one, I know it was mostly buildup and a lot of talking but I promise it was necessary. Lensless needed his moment, and I will not apologize for it. ☆ This was mainly fluff and tension because the next chapter is the main course... and I mean that. You have been warned. ☆ Good news, I already finished writing the next chapter so there's no waiting around this time! I actually kept my promise for once!! ☆ Go check it out for some quality alone time with Sinister in a cave on an alien planet. You know how it is. 🖤

part 8: