The Grayson house was quiet, wrapped in the kind of stillness that only came after midnight. Every light downstairs had been turned off, the television long silent, and the neighborhood outside had settled into darkness.
In his room, Mark lay flat on his bed with his hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling like it might have answers for him.
Sleep wasn't even close. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw trash bags rocketing into the sky and a dumpster rising in his hands like it was made of cardboard.
He turned onto his side and looked at the Iron Man poster hanging across from his bed. Tony Stark was frozen mid-flight, palm raised, jets blazing behind him. Mark stared at it for a long moment, replaying the strength he'd shown in the alley.
The impossible had already happened once tonight. Strength that made no sense. Weight that meant nothing. The thought had been circling in his head ever since he got home, growing louder every minute.
"Could I fly too?" he muttered into the darkness. The room gave no answer.
Mark lay there another minute, then another. He knew he should stay in bed. He knew a sane person would sleep, wake up, and tell themselves it had all been exhaustion or adrenaline or some weird hallucination. But sanity was losing badly tonight.
"Fuck it."
He threw off the covers, crossed the room, and quietly shoved open his window. Cold night air rushed in as he climbed onto the roof, sneakers scraping against shingles.
The city stretched around him in patches of yellow streetlights and shadow, Chicago glowing beneath the stars. His heart was pounding harder now, not from fear exactly, but from anticipation so sharp it almost hurt.
Mark stood near the edge of the roof and looked down at the yard below. It wasn't a huge drop. Enough to hurt if things went wrong, maybe. Enough to embarrass him if he broke an ankle trying to imitate comic book logic.
"Okay," he whispered, taking a deep breath. "In comics and manga they always say it's like a reflex. You just… do it."
He swallowed and flexed his hands. "So all I have to do is jump. I'll probably survive. It's not even that far."
He hesitated one last time, then squeezed his eyes shut.
"Fuck it!"
Mark jumped and for one terrifying second, gravity grabbed him like normal. Then it let go and he stopped in midair.
Mark's eyes flew open. He was hovering several feet above the lawn, suspended in the night like the world had forgotten to pull him down. His mouth fell open in stunned silence, and then a grin spread across his face so wide it almost hurt.
"No way…"
The laugh burst out of him before he could stop it. It came from somewhere deep and wild and childlike. He threw both fists into the air.
"YES!"
Without thinking, Mark shot upward. The yard vanished beneath him as he blasted into the sky far faster than he intended. Wind roared past his ears.
Houses shrank into blocks, streets into lines of light. He yelped in shock, flailing for balance, then overcorrected and nearly spun sideways before managing to steady himself.
"Oh my god okay, okay, okay!" He laughed again, louder this time. He was flying. Actually flying.
Mark angled forward and tore through the night above Chicago, wobbling like a drunk missile. He dipped too low once, then jerked upward.
He spun accidentally, caught himself, and nearly shouted from the rush of it all. Every poster on his wall, every comic panel, every dream of heroes soaring through the clouds none of it compared to this. Then a bright light hit him.
Mark turned and saw it too late. A passenger plane was cutting through the night sky directly ahead, massive and impossibly close, engines roaring like thunder.
"No no no no oh no!"
He jerked sideways with pure panic, barely dodging the plane as it thundered past. The force of the near miss sent him tumbling out of control. Mark pinwheeled through open sky, trying to stop himself, but instead shot straight upward.
He screamed as the city vanished below him. The air thinned fast. The cold became brutal. His lungs suddenly felt too small.
Mark finally managed to stop himself, hanging motionless in a darkness far above the clouds. Below him, Earth curved gently at the edges, blue and black and endless.
For one breathtaking second, he could only stare. Then his chest seized and he realized there was no air.
Mark clawed at his throat instinctively, eyes widening in terror. His vision blurred, stars smearing into streaks of white. The last thing he felt was the sickening realization that he was about to fall.
Then everything went black.
Consciousness slammed back into him with wind screaming in his ears. Mark's eyes snapped open and saw he was plummeting.
The earth rushed up beneath him in a blur of trees and darkness. He opened his mouth and let out a raw scream of terror as instinct took over. He tried to stop, tried to fly, tried to do anything but he hit the woods like a meteor and the impact blasted dirt, branches, and shattered earth outward in every direction.
Birds exploded from nearby trees in panicked swarms. A crater split the forest floor where he landed.
For several seconds, there was only silence.
Then Mark groaned and he pushed himself upright from the center of the crater, covered in dirt, twigs in his hair, shirt torn, body aching in places he didn't know could ache. He spat out mud and slowly looked around at the wreckage he'd made.
Then he started laughing.
It built until he was nearly doubled over, half from shock and half from exhilaration. He spread his arms wide to the empty woods, face lit up with pure joy.
"AWESOME!"
Timeskip
Morning came too quickly.
Sunlight pushed through the windows of the Grayson house in pale strips, cutting across the living room and kitchen with a softness that felt completely disconnected from the chaos of the night before.
Mark moved carefully as he came down the stairs, every step reminding him that while he might be far tougher than he used to be, crashing into a forest at terminal speed still apparently came with consequences.
His shoulders ached, his back felt tight, and there was dirt still trapped under one of his fingernails no matter how much he'd scrubbed.
He was grinning anyway.
Everything looked different now. The banister under his hand, the floor beneath his feet, the walls around him it all seemed strangely fragile. Not in a threatening way, just in the quiet realization that the world had changed overnight, even if no one else knew it yet.
When he stepped into the kitchen, Debbie was already there.
She sat at the table in the same clothes she had worn the night before, a half-empty glass of wine in her hand. Her eyes were fixed on the wall ahead of her, unfocused and distant, like she had been staring there for hours. The television was off. The room was silent except for the faint ticking of the clock above the stove.
"Morning, Mom!" Mark said brightly, trying to sound normal despite the excitement bubbling inside him. "I'll be leaving now. Bye!"
Debbie didn't respond. Mark slowed near the doorway, his smile fading slightly. Her hand trembled around the glass, small but noticeable. She still hadn't blinked.
"Mom?"
Nothing.
For a second, concern pushed through the thrill of last night. He almost stepped closer, almost asked what was wrong, but Debbie finally stirred just enough to take a sip from the glass without looking at him.
Mark hesitated. "…Okay. See you later."
He grabbed his backpack from the counter and left, the front door closing softly behind him.
Outside, the crisp Chicago air hit him like a wake-up call. He stood on the porch for a moment, glancing back at the house. Something was wrong with Debbie more wrong than tired, more wrong than stressed. But whatever it was had been there before last night. It felt older than that. Deeper.
He wanted to ask but he also wanted to know how fast he could fly and the second desire won easily.
Less than twenty minutes later, Mark stood inside an abandoned warehouse near the industrial edge of the city, the kind of place everyone forgot existed unless they needed somewhere private to do something illegal.
Broken windows let in shafts of morning light. Rusted beams stretched overhead. Dust floated lazily in the air, disturbed only by the sound of Mark's footsteps echoing across cracked concrete.
He set his backpack down near a wall and looked around with a slow smile.
"Perfect."
The place was empty, isolated, and large enough that if something went wrong, hopefully nobody would notice. Mark rolled his shoulders and flexed his hands, feeling the strange current of power that now seemed to live under his skin. Even standing still, it was there a pressure like his body was waiting for instructions.
"Okay," he muttered. "Science time."
He crouched slightly and jumped. Instead of a normal leap, Mark launched upward hard enough to slam shoulder-first into a steel support beam near the ceiling. The impact rang through the warehouse like a bell. He dropped back to the ground in a tangle of limbs, groaning as dust rained down around him.
"Okay," he wheezed, rubbing his shoulder. "Too much science."
He stood, backed up, and tried again more carefully. This time he focused less on jumping and more on… wanting to rise. The sensation was hard to describe, like flexing a muscle he'd never known existed. His feet slowly lifted from the floor.
Mark froze.
He was floating. A grin spread across his face. "Oh, that is so cool."
He drifted higher, wobbling badly, then overcorrected and nearly crashed into a stack of old pallets. He caught himself at the last second, hovering sideways for a moment before managing to straighten out.
"Need work," he admitted.
Next came strength. Mark walked to an overturned metal crate half-buried in debris and hooked his fingers underneath it. He expected resistance.
Instead, he flung it accidentally across the warehouse.
The crate smashed through a rotten wooden office wall and disappeared into a cloud of splinters.
Mark stared at the hole.
"I really need to stop underestimating that."
He spent the next hour testing everything he could think of. Short bursts of flight became longer controlled movements. Punches against a concrete pillar left cracks spiderwebbing through the surface.
A sprint across the warehouse floor ended with him accidentally embedding a sneaker into a wall because he hadn't learned how to stop.
Every failure made him laugh harder. Every success made his pulse race. For the first time in his life, Mark didn't feel ordinary. He didn't feel like the kid watching heroes on television or hanging their posters on bedroom walls.
He felt like one of them.
He hovered in the center of the warehouse, breathing hard, sunlight pouring through broken windows around him like spotlights. Dust drifted in the air as he slowly turned, taking in the damage he'd caused.
Then he smiled to himself.
"Invincible," he said aloud, testing the word in the empty space.
It sounded right.
Author Note: Who would y'all like to be the love interest?