Cerberus

Always with the promise of love, he performs.  Vogelbaum’s love, a nonexistent, virulent thing.  Something that bites as much as it rewards.  

A father.

A father who wanted a perfect son.  A creature built to withstand, a child strapped to a critical nuclear reactor.  The boy drowned in boiling water by day and incinerated by night.  Carved and cut, poked, prodded, injected.

More, more, more… All for the love of a father.

The fists of supes, gods in their own right compared to that little boy, beating him senseless all to nurture him.  The hands of doctors, invasive and uncaring, all to manufacture him.

When will he earn it?

Did the young man, overwhelmed by the world, crying fifty miles down the highway earn it?  Did he thrill the investors– make the company look good?  Were his lines delivered with poise and elegance, but not so much that he was too synthetic?

Why hasn’t he earned it?

Maybe, he thinks, he’s meant to earn something different.  Pretty lips and soft, golden locks of hair.  Firm and unwavering in her treatment of him.  Direct and to the point, with something in her voice he’s never heard before.  She is new, she is unfamiliar, and she is what he must earn.  

Her approval.  Her good graces.  Her love.

Promised for years– for more than a decade.  

Jump through this hoop.  Say this line.  Good boy.  But don’t touch.  You have to knock, you have to wait, you have to be patient.

He did it all for her.  Watched her climb higher and higher because of everything he ever did– all for her– but she never took him with.  Merely held his lead and kept the carrot too far from his desperate, starved fangs.

You cannot be bad.

But he wasn’t!  He’s done everything– everything!  

Shouldn’t it be enough?

It was supposed to be enough…

But when does it all become too much?  When does this trained dog finally gnaw himself free of the leash and tear its anchors from his very bones?

When does the little boy in the lab finally free himself?

When he is stripped of everything, when god has his makeshift throne pulled out from under him– that’s when.

Edgar tells him plain and simple, with Madelyn by his side.

“You’re out.”

She does nothing to protect him.

But he doesn’t believe it.  How could they discard their most loyal dog?  Sure, he quakes and whimpers, but his bite is still fierce.  He’s tested the boundaries so many times, but he’ll still rend flesh from bone to protect them.  He can still do every trick asked of him.

He doesn’t believe it when the construction crews disassemble his penthouse.  Even watching the fabrication of his personality ripped from the walls, he doesn’t believe them.  They’re merely redesigning things, of course!  Something new to represent him.  Something better.

When his ‘retirement’ is announced, he still doesn’t believe it.  He must be taking over a new team– a better team.  One that was made for him.  One that was worthy of him.

But it never comes.

They demand the suit be returned in exchange for something more… human.  He denies, of course.  He is their crown jewel.  Why would they want to take that away?

Too much, too much, too much–

He flees to the cabin, but even that is gone.  Flattened earth and sealed pipes, tread tracks leading away from whatever machine tore down his solitude. 

“I’m The Homelander!  You can’t just do this to me!”  

“Not anymore.”  Was the only response Edgar gave him, coupled with that disapproving gaze. Like he was a nuisance, a beast of burden that had long since outlived its usefulness.

The next day, his fingerprints no longer registered in the security scanners.  

His funds had dried out.  There would be no breakfast at whatever cafe he chose to grace with his presence after being refused service at the tower.

Card declined. Card declined. Card declined.

Madelyn wouldn’t pick up.

Edgar’s line was forbidden from outside callers.

Card declined. Card declined. Card declined.

Too many stares.  Too many whispers.

His first attempt at normalcy.

They even took that away.

They took everything.

They took fucking everything.

That poor little shop is the first to feel his wrath.  Cashier lasered in two, customers reduced to pulpy piles of viscera, the front of the building decimated from the deafening boom of his takeoff.  

He rips through the sky toward Vought.  There are no thoughts when he pierces through the building.  He doesn’t even know what floor he picked, only that he’s there and that’s all he needs to know.  His eyes stay primed, indiscriminately mowing down every petrified code monkey or researcher who dared cross his path– or simply was unfortunate enough to be there.

The emergency alarm blares just loud enough to rattle his head.

He severs the elevator cables.  Pries the doors clean off the shaft entrances and goes to work.  Screams echo as the cars plummet, growing softer and softer until the massive bang at the end leaves him closing his eyes in satisfaction.

If he can’t escape his doom– his undoing– then why the fuck should they be able to?

There were more screams to snuff out.  More roaches who have seen his glory and declared him unworthy, who have rescinded their adoration with such telling, instinctual noises of terror.

They don’t love him.

They never did.

He zips out and around the building, targeting a structural support this time– barreling clean through it,  but only one.  Just enough to make them all feel exactly how he felt when the world was pulled out from under his feet.  Unsteady.  Afraid.  

At least he could fly when everything crumbled.

They cannot.  He will rise when they fall, which is exactly how it was always meant to be. 

His eyes roll back into his head with the next wave of shrieks.  The steel beams creak and moan under the imbalanced weight and the building itself seems to sway.  He picks a random level of windows and unleashes his lasers with an intensity he’s never used before.  They pierce through everything– glass, concrete, steel, anything at all that could have been holding Vought Tower together.  They rip through to the next building over and the screams of terror, the gurgles of blood– it all fills his ears like a symphony.

The world is so loud, but, for once, it’s truly all for him. The sirens, the wails, the crying and pleading– it’s all his.

One in particular calls to him.

Her.

She screams his name as though she deserves to utter it– calls out to him, begs for mercy.

But did she show him mercy?  Did she show him anything of the sort when making him jump through hoops and do his little song and dance?  For every time he fabricated stories of his nonexistent family, for every lie about a baseball birthday cake or every tear he ever cried imagining what could’ve been– what should’ve been– did she ever show him mercy?

Every touch and caress was to get what she wanted.  Every teased kiss and wandering hand was simply bait to keep her dog obedient.

No more.

He flies inside, bursts through the windows and takes her by the neck.  His eyes burn a raging crimson, sizzling away with tears that could never shed past the heat of his fury.

“Did you show me mercy?”  He grits, hand tightening around her airway.  “Did you show me love?  Did you!?”

“I– I do lo–” She gasps helplessly, nearly inaudible over the concerto of terror.

“Oh, please.”  Homelander scowls, teeth bared.  “You loved what I could do for you.  You loved what I could fucking help you gain!”

He drags her through shattered glass.  For all of her thrashing, she could never escape his grasp, and he can see the moment she realizes she shouldn’t want to.  He dangles her over the ledge, watching through blazing eyes as her heels plummet to the streets below.

Ninety-nine floors up.

“Oh g-god!”  Madelyn squeaks out, gripping desperately at his wrist.  “P-Please!”

He likes the sound of that.

“God help me!”

He lets his eyes flutter shut and blows a breath through his nose before letting a contented smile creep onto his face.  He brings her close enough to whisper, close enough to see hope flicker in her eyes when she’s above solid ground.

“Why would god help you… when you’ve abandoned him?”

Watching the hope rot in her eyes was delicious.

She falls.

She screams.

And then she’s nothing more than a mark on the pavement.  His heart twists for but a moment, and then he’s off to visit a few others.

Stan.

Easily his favorite moment of the day.  He leaves that office tossing the decapitated head between his hands like a ball.  His only regret was that he didn’t draw it out long enough to hear Edgar beg for his life.  

He sets it on the ground before a gaping hole in the side of the tower, winds up, and kicks it as hard as he can.  Sure, the head is practically mush upon impact from his god-like strength, but the thought of it arcing across the city, maybe even going into orbit, is glorious. 

He’d never be looked down upon again.

Never.

His next visit is to the man he called father.  He feels sorrow in droves as he presses his heel to the old man’s head– perhaps even more so when his fingers pierce through the muscle and sinew surrounding his spine.  It was the screaming he didn’t like.

Ever the authority figure, Jonah Vogelbaum was not a man who cried out from pain.  In turn, he expected his test subjects to be the same.  To scream was to be punished for being so weak– whether because of fear or pain that his body hadn’t quite learned to protect against.

He almost flinches in preparation for the floor grates of his cell to charge with enough electricity to incapacitate him.

But that was then and this is now.  He stands upon freshly waxed linoleum, not metal grates.  The walls are lined with books and photos of great minds his father found inspiring, not blank white panels.  On the wall ahead is the painting of God creating Adam.

He stares at it as he wraps his fist around his father’s spinal cord and rips it clean out.

His ears ring.

He, too, has sinned against his creator; however, he had been damned from the start. There was no Eden for him. Not unless he took it. 

When he finishes, he leaves a trail of bodies.  Workers, supes, emergency teams– anyone he came across.  Not even The Seven was spared his fury.

The only one he makes it quick for is Noir.

The rest of the world isn’t so lucky.

He wipes the Pentagon off the map entirely.  Targets military installations around the country– torches them all and leaves nothing but craters and ash once he’s done.

The little boy once strapped to a nuclear reactor is a force greater than anything they can throw at him.  He practically giggles when he walks off the first atomic bomb.  He’d been just south of San Antonio when they lobbed it at him.

The pilot who dropped it wasn’t so lucky.  Nor the town a few miles away.

He takes out every missile silo his x-ray eyes can find.  Chokes out every detail he can from every soldier with rank worth a squirt of piss until he’s squeezing it out of politicians.

Eventually, even the president.  

He paints the White House red.

Kicks his feet up on the desk, utterly drenched in gore, as he declares himself America’s new leader over the emergency broadcast network– the former’s head rests beside him on the table.  He promises the world will be his.  He vows.

The UN scrambles.  Every nation considers their options.

He laughs.

When they come for him– when he’s eviscerated every supe or cockroach with a gun who dares to think of challenging his rule– he simply smiles.  He laughs and laughs as he litters America’s streets with carcasses of soldiers– of tanks and aircrafts.

He even dives down to find the submarines, pulling them deeper and deeper until the ocean’s pressure devastates their hulls and crushes everyone inside.  He sinks the boats, throws the jets into space, destroys everything until his path of destruction leads him to the front door of every world leader who even so much as humored the thought of taking what was rightfully his.

He makes sure to present the corpses in broad daylight.  He wants everyone to see.

Some cheer.  Tyrants dangled above their heads, blood dripping over the masses.

He is their savior.

Others jeer.

Their heads roll.

He thins the herd of every nation in this way.  Reminds them all of who they serve now,  of what god has seen fit to free them of their spineless rulers and protect them.

All he demands is their love.

That they fall to their knees and pray to him in their time of need.  That they respect the natural order, revere those who have been elevated above them and tear down those who would seek to destroy it.

He reminds them: he can hear everything. He can see through everything.

He will know.

God will know.

Months later, he has them adorn him the way he should have been all along.  He hosts a competition from his new throne– from the tower now stable and powerful once more.  A testament to his glory.

“The winner earns my favor.” He told them.  Thirty costume designers tasked to create a suit worthy of a king.  Something regal, something fierce.

Something for him.

He cuts down those who put forth no effort, offering only designs rotten and abysmal, unbecoming of their god. They should have known better.

They serve as a warning.

One by one, he rages about how they must see him.  Ugly colors, a lack of originality, stupid designs.  One by one, he hands out punishments in abundance.

Until one designer in particular approaches him.  The very last one.  A steely eyed old woman who had worked for Vought for some time.  He recognizes her from his first ever fitting.  She designed the one he wears now.

Before him, she holds a piece of paper and an item covered by fabric.  Homelander chooses not to spoil his own surprise.  Had it been anyone else, he’d have assumed it was garbage beneath that covering, but that look in her eyes dared to differ.

She doesn’t kneel the way the others did.  Doesn’t sputter through justifications on what she shows him or why she thinks it would look best.  She simply hands him the paper and waits.

“And where is this suit?”  He asks with a hint of excitement.

“All good things in time, my lord.”  The woman replies.  Instead, she extends her arms and offers him the covered item.  “For now, I have this.”

A grin carves into his face, eager and pleased with such a creation.  Something fitting for a king.  Something he should’ve had all along.  Carved laurels and gems of deep crimson nested in that touch, that flair he’s been missing this whole time.

For what is a king without his crown?