23 parts Ongoing MatureVessel never felt like a hero. In reality, she was built to endure.
She absorbs pain. Physical most often, but emotional pain sometimes swims through the air in such a way that it's impossible to ignore. Her body turns it into energy automatically, and that's what makes her dangerous. And it's what makes her useful.
When a cosmic threat pushes her beyond her breaking point, she's forced into the orbit of Mark: another hero, kind when others would have controlled, and the only person who's ever seen her as a blank slate. But back home, there's Steven - the man who raised her, trained her, saved her, and perhaps even loved her in ways he was never supposed to.
Caught between the man who shaped her and the one who might finally understand her, Vessel is pulled into a world of impossible choices: between duty and feeling, love and danger, and most importantly, control and freedom.
In a world that only wants her for what she can endure, she has to decide who she's allowed to become when she finally chooses to stop just surviving.
(As of May 5th, 2025, I split the early chapters in half so they are shorter in length. All of the content is the same, in case you happened to have read them while they were much longer).
