"I'm going to Morgan's prom at Lincoln."
The sentence landed in Mark's mind like background noise at first, just another sound layered over the hum of the city, the soft crackle in his earpiece, the ordinary clatter of the café they were in.
Then his brain rewound.
Wait.
He blinked. "You're…what?"
Amber sat across from him, elbows on the table, fingers loosely wrapped around a paper cup gone lukewarm. She didn't look angry. That somehow made it worse.
"I'm going to Morgan's prom," she repeated, slower. "At Lincoln."
The words replayed in his head, stuttering: Morgan's prom. Morgan. Prom. At Lincoln.
He actually heard himself ask it, a beat late. "But…why?"
Amber exhaled through her nose, a half‑laugh with no humor in it. She didn't owe him an explanation. They both knew that. But she also knew him well enough to see the hurt, the confusion, the way his shoulders curled in like he'd been hit someplace that didn't show bruises.
"Because he asked," she said. "Because he showed up."
Mark winced.
"And," she went on, "because I'm tired of waiting by the door in a dress I picked out for someone who's always somewhere else."
"That's not fair," he said automatically, then flinched at his own words. "No, wait, I didn't—"
She held up a hand. "I know you have reasons," she said. "Big ones. Capital‑S 'Saving People' reasons. I know that when you disappear, it's not to play video games or hang out with someone cooler than me."
"That's not—there is no one cooler than you," he said, tripping over himself.
She gave him a small, sad smile. "You say that, and I believe you. That's part of the problem."
He frowned. "How is that a problem?"
"Because I believe you," she said. "Because I know you care. And knowing that doesn't make it hurt less when you're not there."
He opened his mouth, closed it again.
She could hear the faint hiss of static in his left ear. She'd never paid much attention to it before; it was just part of the background of Mark. Hoodie, awkward hands, earpiece. Tonight, though, it suddenly felt like another person at their table.
"And Morgan?" Mark said, the name tasting strange. "You…what, just decided—"
"I didn't 'just decide' anything," Amber said. "I've been deciding for months. Every time you said 'I'll do better' and then forgot. Every time I waited for a text and it came three hours after your face showed up on the news. Every time I caught myself defending you to my friends when I wasn't sure I believed the defense myself."
She looked down at her cup, thumb tracing the cardboard seam.
"He called me on prom night," she said. "Not his. Mine. The one you missed. He showed up at a coffee shop and sat with me in a stupid dress and talked to me like that moment mattered as much as any big fight."
"That's not—" Mark started, then stopped. Because it was fair. Painfully so.
"I'm not going with him to punish you," Amber said. "I'm going with him because I want to go to a prom with someone who is physically there. Who doesn't have one foot out the door every second waiting for the next crisis."
Her voice stayed calm. It hurt worse than if she'd yelled.
In Mark's ear, a voice crackled to life.
"Grayson," Cecil said. "We've got a situation. North industrial district. You're closest."
Amber's gaze flicked to the tiny device sitting snugly against Mark's skin, barely hidden by his hair. She'd known it was there in the abstract way you know your friend has a phone. This was the first time she really noticed it.
He wears that all the time, she realized. At school. At the movies. At my house.
"Now, Grayson," Cecil added, tone sharpening. "We don't have time to—"
Mark's jaw tightened. "I—" he said, staring at the table, at her, at the middle distance where his life kept splitting in two.
"Is he always in your ear?" Amber asked quietly.
Mark blinked. "What?"
"That voice." She nodded toward the earpiece. "Is he always there? Even when it's just…us?"
He floundered. "It's not—I mean, he doesn't talk all the time. It's just for emergencies, and—"
"And there's always an emergency," she finished for him.
She'd stopped explaining without quite meaning to. The thread of her speech had unraveled the second she consciously registered the earpiece as more than just tech—more than just "superhero thing."
Why is he always wearing that thing? she thought. Even on dates. Even sitting in my living room.
She went quiet.
Mark didn't notice at first. Cecil was still talking in his ear—coordinates, situation, the usual rapid‑fire debrief. His fingers dug into his knees under the table.
"Mark," Amber said.
He looked up, eyes torn between apology and panic.
"I'm going to Morgan's prom," she repeated, softer now. "I wanted you to hear that from me. Not from gossip. Not from…anyone else."
He opened his mouth to respond—to argue, to plead, to promise he could fix this if she just gave him time.
In his ear, Cecil said, "Move, Grayson."
Mark flinched like someone had slapped him.
"I'm…sorry," he said, the words tumbling out on reflex. "I have to—"
"Go," Amber said. It wasn't permission. It was acknowledgment.
He stood up too fast, chair scraping. "I'll make it up to you," he blurted. "I swear, I'll—"
"Mark," she said.
He stopped.
Amber looked at him, really looked, taking in the tension in his shoulders, the guilt in his eyes, the way he was already leaning toward the door like gravity had shifted.
"You can't keep saying that," she said. "You can't keep mortgaging the future to pay for the present."
"I'm trying," he said, helpless.
"I know," she said. And that, somehow, was the cruelest kindness.
The inevitable hung between them like a countdown.
"Grayson," Cecil snapped in his ear. "Now."
Mark's face twisted. "I'm—"
She could see the leap before he made it.
"Go," she said again, more firmly. "The city needs you."
He winced, the words landing like judgment even though she didn't mean them that way.
"I'm sorry," he said one last time, and then he turned and bolted out of the café, jacket flaring behind him. A second later, through the front windows, she saw him streak up into the sky, a blur against the evening light.
The door swung shut.
Amber sat there, the empty chair across from her still rocking slightly from the force of his departure. The hiss of milk steaming, the murmur of other conversations, the clink of cups—none of it touched the quiet bubble around her.
She stared at the table for a long moment.
Then she pulled out her phone.
Her thumb hovered over Mark's name for half a second.
She slid past it.
Amber: you free?
Morgan: define free.
Amber: not currently being dragged into the sky by a government handler.
There was a beat.
Morgan: yeah. that's me. what's up?
Amber: coffee? i…could use a friend.
Morgan: text me the café. i'll be there.
She hit send, watched the typing indicator appear, disappear, reappear—normal delays, normal human slowness.
No earpiece. No static. No voice cutting through her sentences telling him to be somewhere else.
She let out a long, quiet sigh she hadn't realized she'd been holding and stood up, tossing her empty cup.
By the time the bell over the café door jingled again, she was ready to say the words she should've said months ago.
And far above the city, in the cold air where he could pretend tears were just from the wind, Mark told himself that once this crisis was over, once the dust settled, once he apologized again—
He'd find a way to rewind a sentence that kept echoing in his head:
"I'm going to Morgan's prom at Lincoln."