🌟HAPPY🌟

『••✎••』

This was it. The crushing pressure of his hand around your throat was the last thing you were going to feel. Your world, which just ten minutes ago had been filled with the mundane concern of cold fries and a possibly sulking Peter Parker, had narrowed to a single, violent point.

You were going to die here. In this mess of a room covered in... webs? Your frantic, oxygen-starved brain couldn't quite process anything beyond the primal terror screaming through your veins. To think, the worst thing you'd anticipated was Peter giving you the silent treatment for being late. You pictured his familiar pout, the way he'd avoid your eyes while you apologized, the eventual softening of his features when you offered him the milkshake you'd bought as a peace offering.

But this… this was a nightmare. A waking, breath-stealing nightmare.

You knew something was wrong when you found the door unlocked yet so difficult to push open. When it finally yielded, it was like breaking through a thick, gossamer membrane. The sight had made your stomach drop. The apartment wasn't just messy; it was cocooned. Shimmering white strands of webbing draped over everything—his desk, the window, the ceiling, the floor. They were beautiful in a horrifying way, like a spider's larder, catching the dim light from the city outside. Panic, cold and sharp, had begun to prick at you.

And then you saw him. Slumped in his desk chair, head bowed. You hadn't even registered the red-and-blue suit at first. All you saw was blood. A dark, tacky mat of it in his hair, stark against the pale skin of his temple, a trail of it snaking down his cheek. Your own blood turned to ice. The food—the greasy burger, the cold fries, the melting milkshake—all forgotten the moment your eyes landed on that crimson stain.

You had never run a day in your life, not even to catch that missed subway the fateful evening you met him, but when he wasn’t responding to your frantic calls, you rushed to his side. Your hands shook, your breath catching in ragged sobs. You reached out, your fingers hovering over the nasty gash, terrified to touch it, terrified of what it meant.

In his unresponsiveness and your hesitation, the world slowed to a near-standstill. You had no idea how much time had passed before he snapped upward.

His head lifted with an unnatural, whip-like speed. No slow rousing from unconsciousness. Just a sudden, violent reanimation. And his eyes... God, his eyes. The warm brown irises you knew, the ones that crinkled at the corners when he smiled, were gone. In their place were two vast, inky pools of black, devoid of humanity, devoid of recognition. Pure predatory instinct.

You didn't even have time to scream. You barely had time to process that his apartment looked straight out of a horror movie and he was dressed in some kind of... costume... before you were flying.

No, he was flying. In a blur of motion, he was out of the chair and on you. You hit the wall with a jarring thud that knocked the wind from your lungs, your head cracking against the plaster. Before you could even register the pain, a hand was around your throat. His grip was like iron, impossibly strong, his long fingers completely encircling your neck. The pressure was instant and absolute, cutting off your airway with terrifying efficiency.

Your hands flew up, scrabbling at his forearm, at his wrist. You might as well have been clawing at steel for all the good it did. Your feet dangled uselessly, kicking against the wall. The room swam in a haze of gray spots and flashing lights. Sounds became muffled, a dull ringing in your ears replacing the panicked, desperate gasps for air your body was making.

And so, here you were. Trapped in the gaze of those abyssal eyes and the crushing grip of the boy you knew. The boy who made dumb jokes and shared his earbuds with you on park benches. Death was a cold, impersonal thing. But dying at his hands, by the strength you never knew he possessed? That was a special kind of hell.

The blackness was closing in, a velvet curtain being drawn around your vision. A strange, calm lethargy began to seep into your limbs. The fight was draining out of you. Your body was giving up. But your mind, in its last few seconds of lucidity, refused. It clung to a single, desperate hope.

And that hope was the size of a little green mug you’d painted with him at a pottery class. You saw it resting on his desk, a splash of clumsy, cheerful color in the dim, web-draped room.

It was your last shot.

With the final ounce of strength you could muster, you went limp for a second, gathering yourself, and then slammed your knee into his abdomen with all the force you could manage from your awkward position. It wasn’t enough to get him to release you, not even close, but you didn’t need it to be. You just needed him to flinch. To break that terrifying, empty focus for a fraction of a second.

To have enough time to reach out your left hand.

Your fingers, numb and clumsy, fumbled for the mug. Your index finger brushed against its cool, painted surface. The sensation jolted through you, a grounding anchor in the storm of your own demise. You hooked your fingers around the handle and swung.

The mug connected with the side of his head with a sickening crack of ceramic on skull. The green mug, painted with lopsided sunshines and your initials intertwined with his, shattered into a dozen pieces.

The effect was instantaneous.

The crushing pressure on your throat vanished. You dropped like a sack of potatoes, your body a dead weight on the floor. Air—sweet and glorious and painful—rushed into your oxygen-deprived lungs in a desperate, ragged gasp. You collapsed onto your hands and knees, coughing violently, your throat burning as if you’d swallowed fire. Each breath was a struggle, a sharp, agonizing pull against the bruised cartilage of your trachea.

Through the haze of tears and oxygen deprivation, you heard a sound. A groan. And it reminded you that he hadn’t made a single noise the entire time he was attacking you—no grunts of exertion, no sounds of effort. It had been a silent, terrifyingly efficient assault.

You looked up.

Peter was stumbling back, one hand flying to the very spot where the mug had struck him—the gash you’d seen earlier. The fresh impact had ripped open what was likely a poorly tended wound, and fresh, bright blood welled up between his fingers. But it was his eyes that held you captive. The abyssal black was receding, the unnatural emptiness draining away like water down a plughole, leaving behind the familiar, startled brown you knew so well. They were wide with confusion, pain, and then dawning horror.

He looked from the blood on his hand, to the shattered green ceramic on the floor, and finally to you. You, crumpled in a heap on his floor, one hand still instinctively cradling your throat as you continued to cough and wheeze.

Realization crashed over his features, a tidal wave of absolute devastation. His gaze dropped to your neck, where the red, mottled imprint of his fingers was already beginning to bloom against your skin.

"No," he breathed. The word was a shattered whisper, barely audible over the ragged sounds of your own breathing. He stared at you, his face a mask of pure, unadulterated self-loathing. "Oh, God. No, no, no..."

You attempted to say something, to tell him you were okay, that you understood, but all that came out was a pained croak. The simple act of trying to speak sent a fresh wave of fire through your windpipe. You squeezed your eyes shut, a fresh tear escaping and tracing a path through the grime on your cheek.

He didn't wait for you to speak. He was already stumbling backward, a frantic, erratic motion that had him colliding with the opposite wall. The impact didn't seem to register. He slid down it, leaving a smear of his own blood on the faded wallpaper, until he was on the floor, mirroring your posture across the room.

He looked small. Defeated. The sight of him in that red-and-blue suit, looking so utterly broken, sent a confusing jolt through your pain-fogged brain.

"I... I did that," he choked out, his gaze fixed on the purple and red marks painting your neck. His hands flew up, as if to ward off an invisible attacker, and he stared at them as if they were alien things, contaminated, monstrous. "I... I could have..." He couldn't finish the sentence. The words died in his throat, replaced by a shuddering, horrified sob that wracked his entire frame.

And in that moment, all of your own fear, your pain, the lingering phantom pressure of his fingers—it all receded, washed away by a tidal wave of concern so fierce it took your breath away all over again. You saw the blood matting his hair, the way he held his side, the tremor running through his hands. You saw the webs cocooning the room, not as a horror-movie set piece, but as a symptom. A sign of something terribly, terribly wrong.

You pushed yourself up, your muscles screaming in protest. Every movement was agony—a dull throb in your head from where you’d hit the wall, and a sharp, searing fire in your throat with every swallow. You ignored it. You crawled the few feet separating you, ignoring the way your jeans stuck to the floor with something you chose not to identify.

"Peter," you tried again, your voice a raw, damaged whisper. "It’s okay. I’m okay."

You lied on the second part, but truth felt secondary to the way he was crumbling before you. He flinched as you drew closer, his entire body shrinking in on itself, a cornered animal expecting a deserved punishment.

"Stay back," he rasped, turning his face away from you, pressing his bleeding temple against the cool plaster of the wall. His shoulders shook with silent, violent tremors. "Please. Just... stay away from me."

You stopped, your hands hovering in the space between you. You could see the fine tremors in them too, adrenaline leaving a tremulous after-effect. The food bag, with its cheerful red-and-white logo, lay toppled near the door, the contents spilling onto the web-strewn floor like a sacrifice left at an altar. The sight was a grotesque parody of the simple hangout you'd planned.

"No," you said, the word stronger this time, pushed past the burn. You didn't move closer, but you made your tone firm, an anchor. "I'm not going anywhere."

He didn't respond. He just kept his face hidden, a statue of self-flagellation carved in blood and spandex. The silence stretched, thick and heavy, broken only by your ragged breathing and the faint, distant wail of a city siren. The webs around the room caught the light again, a gossamer prison he had woven for himself. They weren't random. They were defensive. A barrier. It didn't take a genius to connect the dots: the injury, the suit, the strange strength, the webs, and that terrifying black-eyed trance.

You knew who he was. The knowledge settled in your gut not as a shock, but as a sad, inevitable truth. Of course. Of course it was him. The boy who was always late, who had bruises he'd laugh off, who looked at the world with a quiet, heavy responsibility that never quite left his eyes.

"Peter," you whispered, your own voice cracking. "Look at me."

A shudder ran through him. He shook his head, a minute, desperate gesture against the wall. "I can't."

"You have to."

"I hurt you." The words were muffled by the plaster, but the weight of them hit you like a physical blow. "I looked at you, and I didn't... I didn't see you. I just saw... a threat. And I..." He broke off, a guttural sound of pain tearing from his throat. "I can’t… I can’t look at what I did to you."

You swallowed, a painful, deliberate action. "That wasn't you. I don’t really know what that was, but it wasn't you."

You risked closing the last few inches. You sat on the floor beside him, not touching, just being there. A presence. A refusal to leave. Your proximity seemed to fracture whatever fragile control he had left. He finally pulled his head from the wall, and the sight of his face nearly broke you. The blood from his temple had smeared across his cheek, mingling with tracks of fresh tears. He looked younger than you'd ever seen him, and impossibly older all at once. He was the boy from the subway, and he was a stranger covered in scars you couldn't begin to comprehend.

His eyes darted to your neck, then immediately away, as if the sight burned him. "Don't say that. Don't try to make this okay. It's not okay. Nothing is okay." His gaze, wild and lost, scanned the room, taking in the chaos he’d created. The webs, the blood, the shattered pieces of the stupid, happy mug.

"It's getting worse," he whispered, the confession seeming to tear a hole in the very air between you. "The... the mutation. It’s... changing. I don't sleep. I get these... rages. Blind spots in my head. I wake up and things are... different. Broken. Or..." He trailed off, his gaze finally, reluctantly, landing on you again. "Or worse."

You followed his line of sight to your own hands. They were scraped and swollen from your fight against the door, from your fall. The beginnings of bruises were already blooming on your forearms. Physical evidence of the last twenty minutes. Your life, irrevocably altered.

"Peter," you said, your voice still a raw, painful thing, but steady. "We need to get you to a hospital."

"No." The denial was instant, sharp. The same reflexive fear you’d seen so many times before when he’d brush off a scrape or a bruise. But this was different. This wasn't a scraped knee from a bike fall; this was a gaping head wound and a nervous system that was actively trying to kill him. "They can't... they can't know. What if... what if it happens there? I could hurt someone. A doctor. A nurse. I can't risk it."

"Pete—"

"You need to leave," he cut in, pushing himself back against the wall, trying to create more space between you. "Please. Just go. Get checked out. Tell them you were... I don't know, mugged. Anything. But you can't be here. I'm not safe."

The hypocrisy was staggering. He was sitting there, bleeding, barely conscious, actively falling apart, and his primary concern was your safety. The same safety he had so brutally violated minutes ago. It made your chest ache with a fierce, protective sorrow. He was so far gone he couldn't even accept help.

"I'm not leaving you," you stated, leaving no room for argument. The words rasped in your abused throat, but they were solid. Unwavering. You pushed yourself up, ignoring the way the room tilted, and made a decision. The hospital was a non-starter for him, which left only one other option. You.

You were what he had.

You held up a hand, a gesture of peace, and slowly walked toward the bathroom. The floor was tacky in places, and you had to carefully step over several thick strands of webbing. The small window in the living room offered a clear view of the Queens skyline, a glittering, indifferent universe to the private hell in this tiny apartment. How many nights had he sat here, alone, fighting this battle without a single person to notice?

The bathroom was mercifully free of webs, a small, tiled oasis of normalcy. You turned on the light, and the stark fluorescence made you flinch. Looking in the mirror was a mistake. The face staring back was a stranger’s. Your eyes were wide and bloodshot, rimmed with dark, puffy circles. A deep, nasty purple bruise was already spreading from where your head had hit the wall. But it was your neck that made you gasp.

A necklace of violence. A perfect, five-fingered ring of dark, mottled red and purple was etched into your skin. No wonder he couldn't look at you. No wonder he was so shattered. You gingerly touched the tender flesh, wincing as a bolt of pain shot down your spine. The raw, burning sensation when you swallowed was now matched by a deep, muscular ache. You were a walking, breathing testament to what he was capable of. What he feared he was becoming.

You turned away from the mirror, your resolve hardening. You couldn't fall apart now. You grabbed the first-aid kit from under the sink—a dusty, half-empty box with cartoon Band-Aids and a near-empty bottle of antiseptic. It would have to do. You also grabbed a clean towel and a washcloth, tucking them under your arm.

When you returned to the living room, Peter hadn't moved. He was still curled against the wall, a statue of misery. The sight of the pathetic little medical kit in your hands seemed to break something else in him. A fresh wave of tears welled in his eyes, and he shook his head, a desperate, silent plea for you to stop. To leave. To not try and fix this.

"Stop," you said, your voice a gentle but firm command. You knelt in front of him, close enough to help, but not so close that you were crowding him. "You're bleeding all over your wall, Parker. Let me help."

He didn't fight you this time. He just watched you with those big, broken brown eyes as you dampened the washcloth with warm water and some antiseptic. His whole body flinched when you reached out, but he didn't pull away. He let you gently dab at the gash on his temple. He closed his eyes, and a single tear escaped, tracing a clean path through the blood and grime on his cheek.

The cut was worse than you'd thought. Deep, and probably in need of stitches, but for now, you could only clean it. You weren’t in the headspace to watch tutorials on suture techniques. You were just trying to hold on to the boy in front of you and make sure he didn't bleed out on you.

"So, the whole 'friendly neighborhood' thing is a pretty big understatement, huh?" you said, your voice soft. You were trying to lighten the mood, to break the tension, but it fell flat, landing in the space between you like a lead weight.

Peter didn't laugh. He just flinched again, a full-body shudder this time. "Don't," he whispered, his eyes still squeezed shut. "Please don't joke about it."

"You're right. Sorry," you said quietly. You focused on your task, rinsing the cloth and coming back to clean the last of the dried blood. "Is this what you do every night? Get mauled and then go home and redecorate with... well, this?"

He didn't answer for a long moment. He just breathed, each inhale a little shaky, each exhale a little too controlled. You could see the faint, blue-tinted outline of his collarbone through the tear in his suit, and the skin there was mottled with bruises that painted a story of a brutal fight. The suit itself was shredded at the shoulder and stained with something dark that wasn't blood. Soot, maybe. Or something worse.

"That’s… new. The webs," he finally admitted, the words barely audible. "Started a few weeks ago. I don't even... I don't remember doing it. I just wake up, and it's like this. Or I'll be trying to sleep, and my hands will just... shoot them. I had to buy a new mattress last week because I webbed the old one to the ceiling." He said it with such a flat, hopeless resignation that it hurt more than if he had been crying. It was the sound of a man documenting the slow, inevitable decay of his own mind.

You finished cleaning the wound. The bleeding had slowed, but it still looked angry and deep. The best you could do was press a piece of gauze against it and tape it down as best you could. His skin was clammy under your fingertips. You worked in silence for a few more minutes, the only sounds the distant city hum and the quiet tearing of medical tape.

"Why didn't you tell me?" you asked, the question escaping before you could stop it. It wasn't an accusation. It was a raw, wounded whisper. You thought of all the times you'd hung out, the stupid movies you'd watched, the way he'd expertly dodged your questions about a new bruise or a sprained wrist with a clumsy, unconvincing lie. You thought of how blind you'd been. How willing you were to accept the lie because the alternative was too complicated, too terrifying.

"Would you have believed me?"

His question, so quiet and direct, caught you off guard. You opened your mouth to say yes, of course, but the word wouldn't come out. And it wasn’t just the physical pain in your throat that stopped you. It was the ugly, honest truth. Would you? If he had sat you down one afternoon, over cheap coffee in a diner, and said, "Hey, by the way, that hero everyone in New York has complicated feelings about? The one who swings from buildings and occasionally gets accused of property damage? That's me. Also, sometimes my brain short-circuits and I try to strangle people I care about," would you have accepted it? Or would you have smiled awkwardly, made an excuse, and slowly backed away, convinced he was having a psychotic break?

The silence was your answer.

He gave a short, bitter huff of a laugh that was more air than sound, a pathetic, self-mocking thing. "Yeah. That's what I thought." He finally opened his eyes, and the sheer desolation in them was a physical blow. "Who would? What do you even say to that? 'Hey Peter, cool superpowers, too bad they come with a side order of homicidal rage'?"

You finished taping the gauze, your hands moving with a steady, practiced calm you did not feel. The sterile white patch was a stark, temporary bandage on a problem that went bone-deep. "I wouldn't have said that," you whispered, your throat protesting.

"No? What would you have said?" he challenged, a flicker of the old, defensive Peter sparking in his exhausted gaze. "Would you have run? Called the cops? Or just stopped answering my texts until I got the hint—?"

"Do you know Captain America?" you asked, the question seeming to come from nowhere.

Peter blinked, utterly thrown. "What?"

"Captain America," you repeated, your gaze unwavering. "You know. Stars and Stripes. The guy on the recruitment posters. Have you ever met him?"

He stared at you, his mind clearly struggling to pivot from the abyss of self-loathing to your non-sequitur. "I... yeah. Once or twice. Briefly. He's... why?"

"His best friend," you continued, ignoring the confusion warring with the despair on his face. "The one they called the Winter Soldier. Did you know about him before everything went down? Did you know he was a brainwashed assassin who'd spent the better part of a century being used as a weapon?"

"I... I read the files," Peter said slowly, his brow furrowed. "But what does that have to do with—"

"Everything," you cut him off, your voice gaining a sliver of strength, the edges still raspy but the core of it solid as steel. "Because when it all came out, when Steve Rogers found out that the person who had murdered countless people, who had tried to kill him a dozen times, was just... broken. A good man who'd had things done to him, he didn't run."

You leaned in a little closer, your gaze boring into his, forcing him to listen, forcing him to see the parallel you were drawing. "He fought for him. He risked everything for him. He went to war against the world to protect one person who wasn't in control of himself."

Peter was silent, his jaw slack. He was looking at you like you'd just started speaking in tongues.

"So you want to know what I would have said if you'd told me?" you asked, your words deliberate and punctuated by the painful throb in your throat. "I wouldn't have run. I would have risked the same once I believed because that's what you do when you see someone who's hurting that badly, Peter. You don't run away. You stay. You help."

A fat, glistening tear finally escaped and rolled down his bruised cheek, tracing a path through the blood. It was followed by another, and then another. The careful dam he had built around his pain, around the secret he had carried alone, finally broke. The shuddering sob that tore from his chest was ragged, violent, and it seemed to shake the very foundations of the room. It was the sound of a person coming apart at the seams.

You didn't hesitate. You moved the last few inches and wrapped your arms around him. It was awkward and painful with you both on the floor, but you didn't care. You pulled him against you, your chin resting on his shoulder, ignoring the rough, scratchy texture of his suit. He was stiff at first, a board of resistance and self-loathing, but you held on. You pressed your cheek against the torn fabric of his suit, ignoring the lingering smell of smoke and city grime.

"It's okay," you whispered into the fabric, the words a broken promise you were determined to keep. "I've got you..."

『••✎••』

The island had a way of stripping people down to their barest truths.

It took away jobs, titles, homes, routines… It burned off the carefully constructed identities everyone had brought onto Oceanic Flight 815 and left behind only the things they could no longer hide.

For Jack Shephard, that truth was simple: he couldn’t stop fixing things. People. Problems. The jagged edges of a world that refused to stay whole. Even here, where the rules of civilization had dissolved into salt water and jungle rot, he carried the weight like a second skeleton. Every death on the beach felt like his failure. Every argument, every broken bone, every terrified glance from the others—it all landed on his shoulders because he let it. Because he needed it to.

And then there was you.

He’d noticed you early on, not because you were loud or demanding, but because you were the opposite. You carried your own quietness like armor, watching more than you spoke. You had a way of finding the tasks that kept you on the periphery—mending a fishing net, checking on the fruit stores, always useful, but never center stage. You didn't ask for help. You didn't seem to want it.

That, of course, made you a puzzle. A challenge. Something to be… understood. And for Jack, understanding was the first step toward fixing.

It started small. He’d make a point of walking past your shelter. "Everything holding up okay?" he'd ask, his voice that easy, practiced doctor's tone. You'd just nod, offering a small, tired smile.

"It's fine, Jack. Thanks."

But it wasn't fine. He could see the way you favored your ankle sometimes, the subtle wince you tried to hide when you thought no one was looking. He noticed the dark circles under your eyes that weren't just from the sun or the stress of the crash. You were carrying something heavier than survival. He was sure of it.

The day he found you sitting alone near the treeline, staring out at the ocean with a hollowness in your eyes that even the bright island sun couldn't touch, he couldn't stop himself. He'd been looking for you, actually—a flimsy, manufactured excuse about needing someone to sort through some salvaged medical supplies on his mind.

He sat down a careful distance away, giving you space. "Tough day?"

You didn't look at him right away. You just kept watching the waves, the rhythmic shush-and-roar a counterpoint to the silence. "They're all tough days, aren't they?" Your voice was soft, raspy from disuse.

"Yeah," he agreed, leaning back on his hands. "They are." He let the moment stretch, content to wait. He was good at waiting for the right opening.

"Your ankle," he said finally, gesturing vaguely toward your foot. "It's been weeks. Still bothering you?"

You sighed, a sound that seemed to carry the weight of years. "It's just a sprain, Jack. It gets better, it gets worse."

"You should let me take another look at it. Maybe I can…" He trailed off, realizing he was about to offer to fix it. The words hovered in the humid air, an unspoken promise he made to everyone.

You turned your head then, and your eyes met his. They were a tired color, and in their depths, he saw not gratitude for his concern, but a deep, weary resignation. A wall. And it infuriated him, not out of anger, but out of frustration. He was trying to help. Why wouldn't you let him?

He pushed. It’s what he did. "I just want to make sure you're okay."

That was the catalyst.

A flicker of something—sadness, maybe, or annoyance—crossed your face before it settled back into that careful neutrality. You shifted, pulling your legs up tighter, a clear physical barrier between you.

"You don't have to fix me."

The words weren't an accusation. They weren't even angry. They were quiet. A statement of fact. And they landed with the force of a physical blow.

Jack froze. The script he'd been following in his head, the one where he diagnosed your problem, offered a solution, and you looked at him with that relieved, trusting expression he craved—it evaporated. All that remained was the harsh, humid air and the weight of your gaze, which wasn't accusatory at all. It was… understanding. As if you could see the very machinery behind his helpfulness and were simply pointing it out.

"I…" he started, but the words caught in his throat. What was he supposed to say to that? I know, but I want to? That would only prove your point. I'm not trying to fix you? It was a lie, and you both knew it.

You saved him from the struggle, looking away again, back toward the endless water. "I appreciate the concern, Jack. I really do. You're a good doctor. A good man." You paused, the silence stretching again, but this time it was different. Charged with a new tension. "Save the energy, okay? There are people here with actual bullet wounds and infected gashes. I'm just… tired."

Tired. It was such a small word, but he had a lot of history with tired people. He saw it in the faces of the nurses who worked double shifts, in the patients who'd fought too long for a losing cause. Even his ex-wife had worn that same kind of bone-deep weariness, right at the end.

He thought you were just being stubborn. Another survivor with trust issues, another piece of island chaos to be managed. He told himself that as he stood up, the sand clinging uncomfortably to the sweat on the back of his neck. Arguing was always proven useless with you, so he instead gave you a clipped, professional nod. "Alright. If you change your mind."

He didn't look back as he walked away, but the feeling of your quiet, observant gaze followed him all the way back to the cave. He tried to focus on inventory, on sterilizing needles, on sorting pills—the tangible, solvable problems. He could handle those. He could wrap a wound, set a bone, calculate a dosage. The outcomes were predictable, quantifiable. Success or failure. Clean.

But your words weren't a clean problem. They were a knot in his gut that wouldn't untie. He replayed them over and over. You don't have to fix me. It wasn't a rejection of help. It was a rejection of the very premise of his approach. You were seeing past the doctor, past the leader, straight to the man who needed to be needed to feel like he was worth anything.

He realized then, with a cold, dawning clarity that had nothing to do with medicine and everything to do with the raw, untended parts of himself, that he didn't know how to do it. He didn't know how to simply care for someone without also trying to control the outcome. To love—because isn't that what this was, the terrifying kernel of it all?—without the need to repair. For him, the two were tangled up in the same desperate, tangled root system.

He thought about you, sitting there by the ocean. Alone. Not because you were pushing people away, but maybe because you were waiting for someone to just sit with you in the brokenness, instead of trying to plaster over the cracks. He had been trying to hand you a bandage when what you needed was just a witness.

The realization didn't come with a solution. It didn't make him feel better. It just hollowed him out, leaving a space where the familiar, comforting urgency to fix had always been. And in that hollow space, something new and uncertain began to grow. A question.

『••✎••』

The sterile glow of the Vought Tower fluorescents always felt a little colder in the executive suite now. You sat behind the broad mahogany desk that had once belonged to Madelyn Stillwell, your posture straight, hands folded neatly over the latest quarterly projections. Where Stillwell had filled the room with perfume, practiced warmth, and the low purr of calculated flirtation, you brought silence and structure. No lingering eye contact. No honeyed reassurances. Just data, timelines, and an unyielding professionalism that bordered on detachment.

The other members noticed immediately.

A-Train still showed up late to briefings, but now he found a meticulously itemized schedule of his mandatory appearances on his chair, complete with suggested talking points. He'd huff, mutter something about "that new Stillwell," but he'd be there.

Queen Maeve had tested you once, in that brittle way of hers, pushing back on a disastrous PR initiative. Stillwell might have soothed or bullied. You simply tilted your head, your expression unchanging, and laid out the social media sentiment analysis, the projected stock dip, and the contingency plan you'd already drafted for its cancellation. Maeve had blinked, then nodded, a flicker of something like grudging respect in her tired eyes. She hadn't tested you since.

The Deep... well, The Deep was The Deep. You treated him with the same distant courtesy you afforded everyone else, which was, in its own way, a form of disregard he was unused to. You neither mocked him nor coddled him. You simply assigned him oceanic conservation outreach events and moved on.

But then there was Homelander.

As you figured, he resented you on a fundamental level.

"You're not her," he'd said in your very first one-on-one. He hadn't used Stillwell's name. He hadn't needed to. He stood before your desk, the perfect picture of American masculinity, yet there was a petulant set to his jaw. The patriotic cape was a slash of violent color against the muted tones of your office.

"I am aware," you'd replied, your tone as even as the hum of the server room. "My name is—"

"I don't care what your name is," he cut in, that blindingly white smile not reaching his eyes. It was a mask, and you could see the screws holding it in place. "Stillwell knew what I needed. She understood the team. She understood me."

He leaned forward, the air thickening with the pressure of him, a subtle thrum of contained power. The lights in your office flickered, a barely perceptible stutter. "You're just a placeholder. A suit filling a chair. Don't get comfortable."

It wasn't a threat. It was a diagnosis. He wanted a reaction. Fear, deference, a crack in the composure. He wanted to see Madelyn Stillwell's ghost flinch in your eyes.

You simply met his gaze, your own unflinching. "I’m quite comfortable, thank you. Your itinerary for the next two weeks is finalized on your tablet. The press conference for the youth center initiative is scheduled for Thursday at noon. I expect you to be familiar with the talking points." You gestured vaguely toward the device resting on the corner of your desk. "If that's all, I have a budget meeting with Ashley."

The dismissal hung in the air, cold and sharp. The twitch in Homelander's jaw was the only outward sign of the tempest you sensed brewing behind those placid blue eyes. He stared at you for another long moment, a predator assessing an unnatural prey, before straightening up. The smile returned, wider and more vacant than before.

"Sure thing," he chirped, all false brightness. "Don't work too hard."

And that became the rhythm of your days: a slow, deliberate game of chess played on a board of corporate strategy and volatile superhuman egos. Homelander would arrive, seeking a crack in your professional armor, and you would respond with schedules, projections, and an unassailable calm. You learned his tells. The slight tightening of his fists when he was forced into a charity event he deemed beneath him. The way the temperature in the room would plummet a few degrees when you used the word "no," however professionally couched.

He despised you for it. Not with the hot-headed anger of a teenager thwarted, but with a deeper, more resentful venom. You were the antithesis of everything Madelyn Stillwell had been. Madelyn had understood the power of the soft touch, of whispered validation. She'd created a co-dependent ecosystem where he was the sun, and she was the most skilled reflector, bouncing back the light he needed to see. She gave him control by making him believe he was in charge of her.

You gave him nothing. No ego-stroking, no covert glances of admiration, no gentle hand on his bicep to soften a directive. He was a line item. The most valuable, most dangerous asset, but an asset nonetheless. In your world, assets were managed, not mothered.

You'd poured over the files Stillwell left behind—meticulously organized, of course—and then gone deeper, accessing archives restricted even to the previous management. You read every psych evaluation from Dr. Park, every interview transcript from his childhood at Vought, every redacted report from mission debriefings. You knew about the lab, the name he'd been given before the cape and the flag had been stapled on, the loneliness that sat at the core of him like a black hole.

You knew it all because your job was risk management, and John was the single greatest risk Vought Tower had ever faced.

This knowledge became your shield. It allowed you to view him not as the god he projected, but as the damaged man he was. It didn't make you fear him less; if anything, the clinical understanding of his volatility made you more cautious. But it sterilized your interactions, stripping them of personal information, of anything he could latch onto and twist. You didn't call him "sir" or "hero." You called him "Homelander," the brand name. You treated the brand with cool respect, and the man with clinical distance.

Until today.

The day had started with the familiar thrum of executive-level anxiety. You'd finalized the "God-U" rollout, a line of overpriced, branded merchandise that would net Vought millions but required a full afternoon of Homelander's time for a photoshoot. You had the memo on your desk, ready to be sent, when the knock came. Not Homelander's sharp, expectant rap, but a hesitant, polite tap.

"Come in," you called out, your attention still on the screen. You didn’t realize how much you’d regret those two simple words.

The door clicked open, and a young man, probably no older than twenty-one, stepped inside. He wasn't a supe. He was an intern; you recognized him vaguely from the accounting department on thirty-two. He wore a Vought lanyard around his neck and carried a cardboard tray with two coffee cups. One of them, the one with "DANIEL" scrawled on the side in black Sharpie, was sloshing over the rim.

"Just... uh... leaving the reports from the last quarter, ma'am," he stammered, placing a stack of binders on the corner of your desk. He seemed too nervous to make eye contact, his gaze fixed on the floor. "Ashley said you needed them."

"Thank you, Daniel. Just leave them there," you said, your attention divided. You were typing a last-minute addendum to the God-U memo, a subtle adjustment to the licensing fees that would make legal happier.

He lingered. The silence stretched, broken only by the click-clack of your keyboard. You glanced up, ready to prompt him, and that's when you saw it in his eyes. A desperate, hungry kind of light. He wasn't looking at you. He was looking past you, at the life-sized portrait of Homelander that hung on the wall behind your desk—the one Stillwell had commissioned. The hero's gaze was directed forward, as if looking over the shoulder of whoever sat in the chair, a constant, silent overseer.

"He's... he's amazing, isn't he?" Daniel whispered, his voice cracking. The words were soaked in a dangerous sort of reverence. "I saw him stop a runaway train last week. The news didn't even cover the whole thing. He saved everyone. He's... perfect."

You saved the document with a decisive tap. Your fingers stilled over the keyboard. The temperature in the room seemed to drop, not from an external force, but from the sudden, cold knot of dread tightening in your stomach. You had seen this look before in the files, in the clinical notes on fringe supporters, the ones that ended up in "risk management."

"Daniel, you can go now," you said, your voice losing its corporate neutrality and taking on a flatter, more authoritative tone.

But he didn't. He took a step closer, the forgotten coffee trembling in its paper cup. "I just want to understand him. To be close. I read everything. I know he likes vanilla frosting, not chocolate. I know he listens to 'Old Time Rock and Roll' before missions. I want to help."

"Put the coffee down and leave, Daniel. This is your final warning." You were rising from your chair, the slow, deliberate motion a product of training and instinct, not panic. You reached for the silent alarm button under your desk—a direct line to Tower Security—but your fingers stopped.

His face was crumbling. The reverence curdled into something frantic, unhinged. "No! You don't get it! You're like her! You just use him! You don't see him!" he shrieked, pointing a shaking finger at the portrait. "You sit here in her chair, in her perfect office, and you look at him like he's a product! He's not a product! He's a god!"

He lunged.

He was clumsy, fueled by fanaticism rather than skill. He shoved your keyboard aside, the clatter a violent, alien sound in the sterile room. His coffee cup crashed to the floor, spilling lukewarm liquid across the polished wood. His hands grabbed for the lapels of your jacket, fingers digging in, pulling you forward. You were faster, more trained. You twisted, driving the heel of your palm hard under his chin. He grunted, stumbling back, but his grip didn't break. He was stronger than he looked, almost as if he were possessed by a manic energy.

The fight was a short one. You drove an elbow into his ribs. He yelped and shoved you back against the desk—the sharp edge of the mahogany bit into your lower back, a white-hot jolt of pain. For a terrifying second, he had you pinned, his face inches from yours, the coffee stain on his shirt smelling of burnt beans and desperation. You could see the flecks of spit in the corners of his mouth, the wild, fanatical blaze in his eyes. He was going to hurt you. He was going to mark the place that wasn't yours.

Then, your training kicked in, cold and pure. You stopped fighting his push and used it. You dropped your weight, yanking him off-balance, and slammed his head against the heavy wooden corner of the desk. It wasn’t enough to kill him, or even knock him out, but it was enough.

The sound was sickeningly wet, a dull thud of bone hitting solid oak. He cried out, a choked, gurgling noise, and his hands flew to the back of his head. Blood, shockingly red against the wood, immediately began to seep into the grain. He slid to the floor, dazed and whimpering, the fight gone out of him.

You stumbled back, your breath coming in ragged, painful gasps. A button was torn from your jacket, and your wrist throbbed where he'd grabbed it. The room was a mess. Your keyboard was skewed, coffee was spreading into a dark, sticky puddle on the floor, and a young man was bleeding on your imported rug. Your heart hammered against your ribs like a trapped bird, a frantic, chaotic rhythm that felt utterly alien in your carefully controlled world.

You had Daniel escorted out within three minutes. Tower Security arrived, took one look at the scene—the blood, your torn clothing, the wild-eyed, muttering intern—and understood their orders with quiet efficiency. Of course, you would have to file an incident report, more paperwork, more containment… But for now, the immediate threat was gone and you were alone again in the wreckage of your office.

For twenty seven-minutes.

In those twenty-seven minutes, you did nothing but try to breathe. You couldn't call maintenance yet. You couldn't type on the keyboard. You simply stood there, trying to force your heart rate down, to re-impose the order that had been so violently shattered. The adrenaline was a sour taste in your mouth, the pain in your back a dull, pulsing reminder of your own vulnerability. What were the chances you’d find yourself caught in a confrontation like this? You had prepared for many possibilities: corporate sabotage, blackmail, media leaks. You had not prepared for a deranged fanboy.

And, so, you were just straightening your jacket, fingers brushing the dangling thread where the button used to be, when the door to your office didn't just open, it was propelled inward with enough force to slam against the stopper with a resounding BANG.

You knew immediately who it was before you even looked up.

Homelander.

The golden boy of Vought, framed in the doorway like a vengeful god descending from Olympus. He held a tablet in one hand, and the rage rolling off him was palpable, a shimmering heatwave that made the very air in the room feel thin and electrified. He didn't see the mess at first. He saw only you, standing there, and he was already primed for a fight.

"What in the fuck is this?" he snarled, his voice a dangerously low vibration that made the fillings in your teeth ache. He didn't step inside, just stood there, radiating fury. He tossed the tablet onto a small console near the door; it skittered across the surface and clattered to the floor. "The 'God-U' rollout? I'm not a billboard for cheap plastic shit! This is what I get? After everything I do for this company? A fucking toy line?"

This was the familiar dance—the daily tantrum. Your composure was a fortress, and he was the battering ram. You would normally greet this with the same cool, detached professionalism that had become your armor. You would cite the projected revenue, the brand synergy, and the public's demand for connection.

But you didn't.

Your breath hitched. A small, involuntary sound, barely audible, but in the unnatural quiet of the room, it screamed.

And he heard it.

Homelander's tirade stopped dead. His head tilted, that predatory gaze narrowing as it swept over you, really looking at you for the first time. You knew immediately he was scanning you. The subtle tremor in your hands you couldn't quite still. The frantic, hummingbird flutter of your pulse at the base of your throat. The way your shoulders were squared for impact, not for posture. The faint, coppery scent of blood that still lingered in the air that was masked only partially by the spilled coffee.

His blue eyes, usually so fixed on their own reflection in your polished calm, were now cataloguing everything. The skewed keyboard, the dark stain spreading on the floor, the single, dangling thread on your jacket. The details clicked into place with a speed that was terrifying. The anger in him didn't vanish, but it transmuted. The white-hot, performative fury of a spoiled god cooled into something far more dangerous: the cold, sharp curiosity of a hunter catching an unfamiliar scent in the woods.

"What… happened here?" he asked. His voice was quiet now, devoid of its earlier booming petulance. It was worse. It was the lull before the strike.

You forced yourself to straighten up, to project the authority you were supposed to wield. "A minor security incident," you said, the words feeling thin and brittle. "It's been handled."

You both knew it was code for stay out—a line in the sand. But Homelander didn't recognize lines that others drew. He drew his own.

"Handled?" He finally stepped into the room, his boots making no sound on the carpet. He walked with a predator's economy of movement, all fluid grace and coiled power. He circled your desk, trailing a gloved finger along the polished wood, coming to a halt over the faint, dark spatter of blood. His gaze lifted from the stain to the now-empty space where the intern had been, then back to you. The question in his eyes was not one of concern. It was one of ownership.

"Who was it?" he asked, his voice a low, dangerous thrum.

"Like I said, it's handled." You held his gaze, willing your heart to slow its frantic pace. And of course, he saw it all. Those blue eyes of his were more advanced than any polygraph; they saw the truth in the minute tells of your body. They saw the sweat beading on your upper lip despite the cool temperature of the room. They saw the slight tremor in your hands that you pressed flat against your desk. They saw the way you flinched, an almost imperceptible movement, as he rounded the corner. It wasn't the flinch of someone afraid of a reprimand. It was the flinch of prey that had already been cornered.

The corner of Homelander's mouth twitched. The smile was back, but it was a new kind of smile. A chilling one. A smile that didn't speak of amusement, but of something far more primal. Of something about to be unleashed. He didn't need your words. He had all the information he required from the subtle language of your falling composure. He straightened up, the smile widening, the fury from moments before completely gone, replaced by a dark, anticipatory glee.

"Fine," he said, the word casual, dismissive. "Keep your secrets."

Then he was gone, as suddenly as he'd arrived. The door clicked shut, and you were left in the wrecked silence, the aftershock of his presence lingering in the air like the charged stillness before a storm. The relief was so profound it was dizzying, your body sagging against the desk as the adrenaline finally began to recede, leaving a cold, shaky emptiness in its wake. You had held him off for now.

About an hour or three later, you were trying to restore a semblance of order. You had righted your keyboard, your fingers flying across the keys as you typed up the sanitized version of events for your official report. That was when the news alert popped up on your monitor. A local channel breaking story. You clicked on the link, and the video began to play.

Then the phone call came.

Turns out Daniel wasn’t being taken to a police station or a holding cell. Instead, he was found in a cheap hourly-rate motel room, with his eyes burned out. There was no evidence of anything else. No fingerprints, no DNA, nothing to point to a supe. The official report said it was a tragic case of self-immolation.

But you knew. You knew exactly what had happened, and who had done it.

That was the moment your professional detachment shattered, not into fear, but into a cold, crystalline fury. That was when he got what he wanted. He wanted emotion from you? Wanted a reaction? Oh, he was going to get one.

Since he barges into your office often, you decided to give him the same energy he gave you. You pushed the heavy oak door of your office open and walked into the hallway of the executive suite, your steps purposeful, echoing in the polished marble. You didn't bother with subtlety. You strode right past Ashley’s desk, ignoring her startled squeak, and straight to the door of his private quarters on the top floor of the Tower.

You didn't knock. You used the master keycard you'd been given for emergencies. The lock clicked open with a satisfying, definitive sound.

He was there, standing in the middle of the vast, sterile living room, staring out the floor-to-ceiling window at the glittering sprawl of New York City. The city lights painted him in shades of blue and gold. Like always, he was in that suit, a monument to an image he could never truly live up to. He didn't turn around, but you knew he'd heard you. He would have heard you the second you stepped out of the elevator. He was aware of every heartbeat in this building, but especially yours.

"You're going to need to start paying rent for the space you're taking up in my head," he said, not bothering to turn. His voice was a low murmur, laced with a smug satisfaction that made your blood boil. "I'm getting awfully tired of it."

"You burned out his eyes," you said. Your own voice was surprisingly steady, a stark counterpoint to the storm raging inside you.

At that, he turned. Slowly. The smirk was already on his face, confident, expectant. He was enjoying this. He was waiting for the fear, the cowering, the grateful relief of the damsel he'd "rescued." He was relishing the victory, the proof that he had finally breached your fortress.

"Aww, did the poor little intern have an accident?" he cooed, the mock sympathy a venomous poison in the air. "I hear he was a troubled kid. A real danger to himself and others. Sometimes people just... snap."

The casual cruelty of it, the effortless way he rewrote reality to cast himself as a janitor cleaning up a mess, was what broke something loose inside you. All the weeks of calculated composure, the meticulous management of personalities and risks, the hours spent buried in files that detailed a lifetime of psychological damage—it all coalesced into a single, burning point of clarity.

You took a step closer. The marble floor was cold beneath your shoes. You didn't flinch. You didn't stop.

"He touched me," you said, your voice devoid of any inflection. It was a statement of fact, a piece of data being entered into the equation. "He put his hands on me, in my office. He left blood on my desk."

Homelander's smirk didn't falter, but a flicker of something else—confusion, perhaps, that you weren't reacting with the expected terror or gratitude—crossed his eyes. He had expected you to be weak, a frightened animal he could then soothe and dominate. But you weren't an animal. You were a calculator, and you had just input the final variable.

"And you know what my job is, Homelander?" you continued, taking another deliberate step. The space between you was shrinking, the air growing thick and heavy with unspoken history. "My job is risk management. And there was a risk. A variable. An anomaly."

You were now just a few feet from him, close enough to see the microscopic flaw in the left lens of his suit, the faint, almost invisible scar at the hairline he could never quite hide. You looked up at him, not as an employee to a boss, or a subject to a king, but as one predator to another.

"Anomalies are meant to be corrected," you finished. "I had it under control. I was handling it. But you didn't trust me to handle it. You took it from me. You made it yours."

A muscle feathered in his jaw. The charade was cracking. The smirk was still there, but it was a strain now. He could feel the shift in the dynamic, the ground moving beneath his feet, and he didn't like it. Not one bit.

"Sounds like you're ungrateful," he said, his voice losing its playful edge and hardening into steel. "I did you a favor. I took out the trash."

You let out a short, sharp breath that wasn't a laugh. "A favor? You violated the chain of command, bypassed every protocol I have in place, and committed a homicide that, if traced back, could expose the entire operation. You didn't do me a favor, John. You created a bigger mess."

The name hung in the air between you, a bomb dropped in the sterile silence.

The smirk vanished. Utterly. It was wiped from his face as if it had never been there, leaving behind a raw, chilling blankness. His expression didn't fall into anger, or surprise, or the theatrical shock of a performer whose secret has been revealed. It went somewhere else entirely. It went void. The blue of his eyes seemed to darken, to absorb all the light in the room, becoming the fathomless, predatory cold of the deep sea. For the first time since you’d met him, you were not looking at Homelander, the brand. You were not looking at the petulant god. You were looking at the boy from the lab, the creature who had never been given a name he could claim as his own, and you had just spoken it aloud.

He took a step toward you. It wasn't a threat, not yet. It was a claim—a reclaiming of space. You held your ground, your body a taut wire of tension. You could feel the thrum of his power, the air itself beginning to vibrate with a sub-audible frequency that made the hairs on your arms stand on end.

"You think you're clever," he said, his voice a near-inaudible rasp. The theatrical, all-American baritone was gone, replaced by something stripped bare and dangerous. "You read a few files, think you know me? Think that gives you some kind of power over me?"

"No, John," you said, your own voice dropping to match his, a low, steady counter-frequency. You let the name settle again, a deliberate, precise weapon. "It gives me understanding. And understanding is the basis of control. Something Madelyn understood very well. She gave you a mother. A confidante. She gave you a reflection that told you exactly what you wanted to hear."

Another step. He was so close now you could feel the heat radiating off him, a palpable, nuclear warmth that had nothing to do with body temperature. You could see your own reflection, distorted and tiny, in the perfect blue of his irises.

"And what do you give me?" he murmured, the words a soft, intimate threat.

"Nothing," you replied. "That's the difference between her and me. She wanted to be the one pulling your strings. I don't. I want to cut them."

The silence that followed was absolute. The only sound was the faint, electrical hum of the city far below, and the frantic, trapped beat of your own heart, which you forced yourself to ignore. The air crackled around him, a static charge that prickled your skin. The muscles in his forearms were rigid, the fabric of his suit stretched taut over balled fists. He was a coiled spring, and the only thing holding him back was the sheer, overwhelming shock of your defiance. It wasn't the defiance of a subordinate; it was the defiance of an equal.

Then, as quickly as it had come, the tension broke. A terrible, terrible smile spread across his face. It was not a smile of humor or pleasure. It was the smile of a scientist who has just been presented with a fascinating, unexpected specimen.

"I could rip you in half," he said, his voice a conversational whisper. "Before you could even scream."

"Is that what you did to Madelyn? When she stopped being a mirror and started being a person?" you countered, your own voice dropping into that same quiet, dangerous register. You were gambling, betting your life on the data you'd consumed. He'd killed her not for her betrayal of Vought, but for her betrayal of him. For the ultimate proof that her world did not, in fact, revolve around him. "Or did you burn her eyes out too like you did with Daniel?"

He moved so fast you didn't even register it. Your back was against the wall, the cold glass of the windowpane pressing into your shoulder blades. The impact didn't hurt, not yet. You were too stunned by the sheer impossibility of the motion. If you thought he was close before, he was now in your space. A solid wall of impossible heat and coiled muscle. His gloved hand was flat against the window beside your head, caging you in. His other hand was pinned against your shoulder, not quite a grip, but a pressure point that told you exactly how little effort it would take for him to simply push through your body and into the wall behind you.

You couldn't breathe. Not from a lack of air, but from an overload of stimulus. The sheer, overwhelming presence of him. The scent of sterile, dry-cleaned fabric, the faint, metallic tang of something otherworldly. You felt the thrum of power in the air, not just a vibration, but a tangible force that made your teeth ache, and your vision swim at the edges. You saw him up close: the microscopic imperfections in the pores of his neck, the faint pulse beating there, the terrifyingly human detail on the face of a god.

And yet, you didn't look away. You stared up into those terrifying, empty blue eyes, and you saw the war raging within them. The rage, yes, but something else, too. A flicker of something almost like awe. A predator's respect for prey that doesn't flee.

"Don't you ever say her name to me," he breathed, the words a hot gust of air against your cheek. The "John" had been a declaration of war, but "Madelyn" was an atomic bomb, a reference to the one person who had ever truly gotten under his skin, the one who had proven that even he could be played. The one he had killed not with a blast of heat, but with the slow, suffocating poison of his disappointment.

"I will say whatever I like," you choked out, the words forcing their way past the constriction starting in your throat. Your body was screaming at you to shrink, to apologize, to show deference. You ignored it. "Because I am not her. I am not your toy. I am not your reflection. I am your manager, and you are a multi-billion-dollar asset that is currently behaving like a spoiled child."

His grip on your shoulder tightened, not enough to crush bone, but enough to be a promise. A warning. The pressure was immense, a grinding force that made you feel as if your entire skeleton was about to be compacted into dust.

You held his gaze. "You can break me," you said, your voice a hoarse whisper, each word a deliberate, painful act of defiance. "You can vaporize me. You can turn me into a smear on this very expensive window. But it won't change the facts. You are out of control. You are a liability. And I am the one they hired to fix that."

The silence stretched, a thin, taut wire vibrating between life and death. You could feel the heat building from his hand, a terrifying prelude to the eyebeams. The glass of the window beside your head began to groan, a faint, high-pitched whine as the temperature climbed. You braced yourself, a strange, cold calm settling over you. This was it. This was the risk you had managed for, the final variable in the equation.

And then, he laughed.

It wasn't the boisterous, all-American laugh he gave for the cameras. It wasn't the mocking giggle he used to intimidate. It was a low, genuine, utterly terrifying chuckle that rumbled up from deep in his chest. The pressure on your shoulder eased, though it didn't vanish. The heat subsided, leaving behind a patch of mist on the windowpane. He pulled back, just enough to look at you properly, a fascinated, almost gleeful expression on his face.

"You're something else," he breathed, the smile not quite reaching the chilling emptiness in his eyes. "She was terrified of me, you know. Right up until the end. She thought she had me, but she was always walking on eggshells."

His gaze swept over you, from your defiant eyes to the steady set of your jaw, down to your hands, which remained clenched at your sides, not raised in supplication. "You're not. You're not scared at all. Are you?"

The question hung in the air. It wasn't an accusation; it was a diagnosis. He was peeling back another layer, and what he found beneath fascinated him.

"Let me be clear," he continued, his voice dropping back into that intimate, dangerous register. He leaned in again, his face so close to yours that you could see the dark fringe of his lashes, the flawless skin stretched taut over high cheekbones. "I didn't kill Daniel for you. Don't flatter yourself. I killed him because he touched my things. Because he made a mess in my house. This Tower, this floor, this office... It's all mine. You're just sitting in the chair."

He pulled back completely then, releasing you from the cage of his body. He straightened his glove, a fastidious, dismissive gesture, as if he'd just touched something dirty. "You want to cut my strings? You want to 'manage' me? Go ahead. Play your game. Run your numbers. Send your memos." He turned his back on you, strolling casually toward the window again, the picture of a man utterly in control of his domain. "Just remember what happened to the last person who thought she could."

The threat was explicit, but the dismissal stung more. He was relegating you to the same category as Stillwell. A challenge to be met, an obstacle to be removed. But you were not Stillwell. You had not come here to love him or control him through affection. You had come here to understand him, and in that moment, you understood more than ever. He wasn't a god to be worshipped or a monster to be slain. He was a black hole, a singularity of need and power that consumed everything around it. Your job wasn't to fight the pull, but to calculate its event horizon.

You straightened your jacket, your hands moving with a practiced calm to brush away imaginary wrinkles, a grounding ritual to center yourself. The adrenaline was still a tremor in your limbs, but the ice was back in your veins. "Duly noted," you said, your voice once again the cool, dispassionate tool of your trade. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a mess of my own to clean up. And John?"

He stopped, his back still to you, a rigid line of patriotic red and blue. The silence that followed your use of the name was a victory in itself—a small, sharp crack in the facade of Homelander.

"Next time you take it upon yourself to 'clean house,'" you said, your words precise and cold as scalpels, "try not to leave forensic breadcrumbs a first-year CSI could follow. Sloppy work is bad for the brand."

And with that, you turned and walked out, leaving him alone in the penthouse with the city lights and your words.

The click of the door closing behind you was the most satisfying sound you had heard all day. You didn't run. You didn't hurry. You walked back down the pristine, silent hallways of the executive suite, your heels clicking a steady, unfaltering rhythm against the marble. Every fiber of your being screamed at you, a primal chorus of fear and disbelief. You had just stood toe-to-toe with the world's most powerful being, called him by the name he hates, and accused him of sloppy work.

And you had walked away.

What you didn't know, couldn't know, was that he remained standing there long after you left, a statue frozen in front of the city he ruled. He lifted a hand, not to punch through the glass or to summon a blast of heat, but to touch the spot on the windowpane where your head had been. The faint imprint of your heat was already gone, dissipated into the cool night air. He stared at the spot, a frown creasing his brow, a look of profound, unnerving thoughtfulness on his face. The game had changed. The pieces on the board were no longer moving the way he'd anticipated. He didn't know the rules anymore. And for the first time in a very long time, that didn't infuriate him.

『••✎••』

The house was quiet in the way old houses are when they think no one's listening—creaks swallowed by thick walls, the low hum of the fridge in the kitchen below like distant breathing. John Wick woke to none of it at first. Just the headache. A slow, insistent hammer behind his left eye, spreading like spilled ink across his skull. Not the sharp crack of a concussion, not the burn of a hangover. Something duller, chemical. Familiar in a way that made the hair on his forearms stand up before his mind caught up.

He didn't move. Not yet.

The bedroom smelled the same as always: faint gun oil from the night before, clean linen, and something else. Something sweet and burnt, like toast pushed too far. His gun was on the nightstand, right where he remembered leaving it, but the carelessness of it—unsecured, while he slept like a stone—was a warning bell clanging in the silence that only he could hear. Years of conditioning screamed at him. He never slept this deep. Never.

His hands went to his neck, feeling for puncture marks, but all he found was skin, clammy with a sweat that wasn't from exertion. The last thing he remembered... nothing. A book, maybe? The lamplight on the page, the weight of it in his hands. Then this. This void. This unnatural, forced stillness in his limbs, the heaviness in his head that made even lifting it a chore.

A different fear began to creep in, colder than the thought of intruders. He pushed himself up, the room tilting slightly before settling. He ignored it. He moved with a grim efficiency, checking the magazine in the pistol—a full clip, untouched—and chambering a round with a soft, lethal click that was the only real sound in the room. He padded across the hardwood, bare feet silent, checking corners, the empty bathroom, the shadowed space behind the door. Clear.

His next thought was you. Your room. He was at your door in three long strides, the gun now tucked into the waistband of his pants from habit as much as necessity. He didn't knock, only eased it open a fraction, then wider when he saw the empty bed, sheets thrown back in a tangle. You were an immovable object on weekend mornings, a lump beneath the covers until well past noon. Even as late as he’d apparently slept, you should still be there. This wrongness was piling up.

Then came the noise.

A clatter from downstairs. Loud. Metallic. The unmistakable sound of a pan hitting the tile floor, followed by a muttered curse that was definitely yours.

He was moving before the echo even died, fluid and silent despite the fog in his head. He took the stairs two at a time, gun back in his hand, every nerve humming. He cleared the living room, the dining nook, every shadow a potential threat. He rounded the corner into the kitchen, ready for anything—

—and then he saw you.

You were on your hands and knees, muttering under your breath as you swiped at something on the floor with a dishrag. Your back was to him, your movements clumsy, rushed. In front of you, the stovetop was a disaster zone. A pan sat askew, egg sputtering messily over the sides. A bowl was tipped over, spilling what looked like shredded cheese onto the counter. The air was thick with the smell of burnt butter and cooking eggs.

He saw you, unharmed, completely absorbed in your chaotic mission, and the tension drained out of him so fast it left him dizzy. The gun was holstered in his waistband, the motion so fluid and practiced you wouldn't have even registered he'd been holding it.

You wouldn’t have noticed his presence either if it wasn’t for the sudden jolt of pain that flared in his head, causing him to lean against the doorframe with a quiet groan. You froze, spinning around, the rag dropping from your hand.

You looked like a deer caught in headlights, and when your eyes met his, you didn't have to say a word. He saw it. The guilt. The panic. The plan that had gone spectacularly, obviously wrong.

That wrongness from before snapped into focus with crystal clarity, because now he remembered something from the night before, a fleeting image of you handing him a glass of water, your smile a little too bright as you’d wished him a good night. He never took anything from anyone, not even water, without checking it first. Except you. He trusted you.

He straightened up, ignoring the throb behind his eye, letting the silence stretch, letting the weight of it press down on you. If he wasn’t so wrung out, he might have even managed to look angry, but the drug had leeched that away. He had to settle for something far more dangerous: disappointment.

“What did you do?” His voice was rough, low. Not a question. An indictment.

You flinched, picking at a loose thread on your apron. “I... I made you breakfast?” It came out as a squeak. A weak offering.

“The headache,” he continued, stepping further into the kitchen, his eyes scanning the mess, then landing back on your face. “What was it?”

“Just... something to help you sleep,” you mumbled, your gaze fixed on your shoes. “You're a light sleeper. And I'm... well, this.” You gestured vaguely at the culinary crime scene surrounding you. “I didn't want a gun in my face the second I dropped a spoon.”

The logic was infuriatingly, endearingly stupid. And he was about to tell you so, to lecture you on the hundred different ways that could have gone wrong, on the fact that he sleeps light for a reason, on the sheer, unmitigated danger of rendering yourself defenseless like that, of rendering him defenseless. But then he saw it. On the counter, peeking out from under a flour-dusted towel. A small, worn notebook, its pages yellowed with age.

He moved toward it slowly, and you didn't stop him. He picked it up. The cover was blank, but inside, in a looping, elegant script he hadn't seen in years, was a list. A recipe. And at the top, written in the same graceful hand, were the words: “John's Favorite.”

Helen's handwriting.

The breath he didn't know he was holding escaped him in a long, silent rush. He looked from the book to the disaster on the stove, and then to you, who was watching him now with wide, apprehensive eyes. And he understood. Every burnt piece of toast, every spilled ingredient, the whole insane, desperate plan. It wasn't about the noise. It was about this. About this book you'd found, about the recipe you'd tried to recreate.

“I...” he started, and had to clear his throat. He looked back down at the book, at the recipe for a mushroom and cheese omelette that Helen had perfected, that he hadn't tasted in... God. Years. He hadn't even known this book existed. “You found this.”

You nodded, your lower lip trembling slightly. “In a box in the attic. I just... I wanted to... I know it's not the same.”

He looked at the omelette sizzling in the pan. It was lopsided, slightly brown on one side, cheese leaking out like a wound. It was a mess. It was nothing like hers.

But it was there.

He put the book down carefully, reverently, on a clean patch of counter. He turned back to you, and when he spoke again, the anger was gone, replaced by a bone-deep weariness that had nothing to do with the drug in his system. “Why? Why go to all this trouble?”

You looked down at your feet, then back up at him, and for the first time, you looked less like a criminal and more like a child who was desperately hoping they hadn't broken something irreplaceable.

“It's Father's Day,” you said, your voice barely a whisper.

The words hit him harder than any bullet. Father's Day. A day that had never existed in his world. It could’ve, maybe. If things had been different. If she'd still been here, if they'd had a chance... but that path had been closed off long ago. He'd locked it himself, buried it under so much death and violence he'd forgotten the key. It was just another date on the calendar, another ghost to ignore.

But in that moment, as he stood in a kitchen that smelled of burnt butter and a desperate attempt at normalcy, he realized that for you, it wasn't. It was still real. And in your world, he was the closest thing you had.

The day he saved you, the day he took you in, he hadn't been thinking about fatherhood. He'd been thinking about debt. About a promise. About a life that needed protecting from the one he'd made for himself. He was a weapon, a tool, a ghost. Not a parent.

Clearly he wasn’t a very good one, either, if you thought drugging him was an acceptable solution to a problem.

He gestured towards the stove with a slow, deliberate movement. “Turn it off.”

You scrambled to obey, twisting the knob with a clatter. The sizzling died down, leaving only the hum of the refrigerator. The silence that followed was heavy, charged with unspoken words.

“Sit,” he said, not unkindly, pointing to a stool at the kitchen island.

You sat, your hands folded in your lap, looking like you were awaiting sentencing. He leaned against the counter opposite you, the ache in his head a dull thrumming now. He had to get this through your head. He had to make you understand.

“Do you have any idea what you did?” he began, his voice low and even. “What could have happened?”

You started to speak, but he held up a hand, and you closed your mouth.

“Whatever you gave me, it put me out. Completely. Someone could have come through that door,” he nodded towards the front of the house, “and I wouldn't have known. Not until it was too late.” He paused, letting that sink in. “You seen the news lately? You know the kind of people who are still looking for me? They don't knock. They don't care if there's a child in the house. All they care about is settling a score. And in that state, I couldn't have protected you. I couldn't have protected anyone.”

He could see the shame in your eyes, the way you were shrinking into yourself. Good. You needed to feel it. But then he saw something else. Defiance. A spark of it, buried under the guilt.

“We were safe,” you mumbled, so quietly he almost didn't hear it. “I made sure of it. I locked the doors. I was awake.”

“That's not the point!” The words came out sharper than he intended, a crack of thunder in the quiet kitchen. He took a breath, reining it in. “You can't. You can't ever do that again. You hear me?”

You looked up at him, your chin jutting out just a little. That spark flaring brighter. “You slept for eight hours.”

He stared at you. The non-sequitur threw him. “What?”

“Eight hours,” you repeated, a little louder this time. “I checked. You haven't slept for eight hours since I've known you. Probably longer.” You looked him straight in the eye, and your words were a direct hit. “You probably had the best sleep you've had in a long time.”

The silence stretched again. He had no answer for that. Because you were right. He hadn't realized it until you said it, but it was true. The drug had forced a level of unconsciousness on him that was a foreign country. A stolen moment of peace he hadn't even known he was desperate for. He couldn't remember the last time he'd woken up without a phantom pain in his shoulder, without the echo of a gunshot in his memory. This morning, all he had was the headache. And even that was fading.

He looked at the omelette sitting cold in its pan. A mess. A failure by any culinary standard. An insult to Helen's memory.

And yet.

He thought of the hours you must have spent, poring over that book, deciphering her handwriting, trying to mimic a love you could only know secondhand. He thought of the courage it must have taken to spike the water of a man like him, to risk his anger for the sake of a surprise. He thought of the quiet desperation in your voice when you'd said, “Father's Day.”

He sighed, a sound that seemed to carry the weight of every life he'd ever taken. He pushed himself away from the counter and walked over to the stove. He picked up the pan, looked at the sad, lopsided creation within. And then he did something that surprised you as much as it surprised him.

He grabbed a fork from the drawer, stabbed a piece of the omelette, and put it in his mouth.

It was… fine. A little bland. The cheese was clumpy. The mushrooms were slightly undercooked. It tasted of effort and burnt butter and a clumsy, unwavering affection that he hadn't realized he was starving for.

He chewed slowly, swallowed. He looked over at you. You were watching him, your whole body tensed, waiting for a verdict.

“We're going to have a talk about boundaries,” he said, his voice still serious. “A long one. You're going to promise me, on your life, that you will never do anything like that again.”

You nodded, your eyes wide, a tear finally escaping and tracing a path down your cheek. “I promise.”

"Good," he said. He took another bite. He wasn't hungry, not really, but he ate it anyway. He ate it because it was the only way he knew how to say what he couldn't bring himself to say. That he saw you. That he understood. That in the middle of all the darkness, all the blood, all the grief, this ridiculous, burnt omelette was the realest thing he'd touched in years.

Dog finally trotted into the kitchen, drawn by the smell of food and the strange quiet. He looked at John, then at you, then back at the floor, where a small pile of shredded cheese still lay. He sniffed at it, looked up at John for permission.

John gave a short, almost imperceptible nod. Dog promptly began to clean up your mess with quiet enthusiasm.

It broke the tension. You let out a watery laugh, swiping at your eyes with the back of your hand. “He's a better cook than I am.”

“He has lower standards,” John said, finishing the last of the omelette. He put the empty pan in the sink. The silence that followed was different now. Softer. Less like a void and more like a space. A place where something could be built.

He leaned against the sink, watching the way you'd finally relaxed your shoulders, the way you were now trying to subtly wipe down the counter with your sleeve. It reminded him of the day you met.

Aurelio had called him in for a favor. And given everything that he did for him, it was the least John could do. Aurelio never did ask for much.

Of course, John had assumed it was going to be about a body. It was always about a body. A clean-up, a disposal, a message sent.

Instead, he had found you. Huddled in the back office, knees pulled to your chest, not crying, just… staring at the wall with a vacant expression that was far more unsettling than tears. Turns out, you were the lone witness to a deal gone sour. A child in the wrong place at the wrong time. You were a loose end.

And in their world, loose ends get cut.

Aurelio found you in the aftermath, huddled behind a stack of tires. He’d hidden you, kept you safe while he figured out what to do. And what he did was call John. Because John understood loose ends. And because John, for all the lives he had taken, was the one person Aurelio knew if he asked to protect a life, he’d do it. No questions asked.

Granted, you weren’t in immediate danger anymore. The ones who had been there were taken care of, thanks to John. But in this life, any day could be the wrong day, in the wrong place.

Aurelio had told him he'd find you a new life, a safe house somewhere, far away from all of this. He told John he didn't have to make it personal.

But John had looked at you then, at the sheer, stubborn refusal to break, and he'd seen something he hadn't seen in a very long time. A spark. A future that hadn't been extinguished. And he knew he couldn't just drop you off and walk away. He’d already given up one future. He couldn't bear to stand by and watch another be snuffed out.

So he took you home.

He had no idea what to do with you. The quiet, empty house that had been a mausoleum of memories was suddenly filled with the small, living sounds of another person. The creak of a floorboard at two in the morning when you got a glass of water. The thud of a book being dropped. The quiet murmur of you talking to yourself as you did your homework.

He'd given you a room, a key, a set of rules. He'd taught you basic self-defense. How to fire a pistol, though he hoped to God you'd never have to. How to be aware of your surroundings. How to look like you belonged, even when you felt like you didn't.

He thought he was preparing you for the world. But in reality, you were remaking his. Slowly, piece by piece. Daisy would’ve been the first, he supposed. But she was gone before she could truly teach him. Then Dog, a silent, loyal anchor. Then you. You, with your ridiculous television shows, your constant questions about the mechanics of a car, your insistence on leaving the lights on in every room you entered. You, who saw a semi-retired assassin and somehow saw a dad.

He looked at you now, scrubbing at a stain on the counter with a ferocity that suggested it had personally offended you. And he felt something shift inside him, a tectonic plate of grief settling, revealing a new, unfamiliar landscape beneath.

“It needs salt,” he said.

You stopped scrubbing and looked up at him, your brow furrowed. “What?”

“The omelette,” he said, gesturing with his thumb towards the now-empty pan in the sink. “Helen always used a little more salt. And a pinch of paprika.”

A slow smile spread across your face, tentative at first, then brilliant. It was the first real smile he'd seen from you all morning. “I knew I forgot something,” you said, your voice light with relief.

He watched you for a moment longer, the smile still playing on your lips, the way your shoulders were no longer hunched around your ears. The headache was gone, replaced by a feeling he couldn't name. It was close to peace. Close to contentment.

He pushed himself away from the sink. “I'm going for a walk,” he said, the words feeling strange in his mouth. A walk. For no reason other than to walk. He hadn't done that in years.

You nodded, your smile softening. “Okay. I'll... I'll clean up in here.”

He turned to leave, but stopped at the doorway. He didn't look back at you. He kept his gaze fixed on the hallway, on the sliver of morning light cutting across the floor.

“Next year,” he said, his voice quiet but clear. “Wake me up. Normally.”

He didn't wait for an answer. He just walked away, the sound of Dog's claws clicking on the hardwood floor as the dog trotted after him. He didn't need to look back to know you were smiling. He could feel it all the way down the hall.

You were still getting grounded. For a week. Minimum. But right now, as he stepped out into the cool morning air, the sun on his face, he felt lighter than he had in a very, very long time. For the first time in what felt like an eternity, the world outside the walls of their house didn't feel like a threat. It just felt... like a Sunday. A quiet, ordinary, perfect Sunday. And for a man like him, that was the most dangerous feeling of all. Because that meant he had something to lose again. And he’d be damned if he let anyone take it away again.

『••✎••』

You’ve loved Robbie since the cracked leather seats of smoky backroom bars in the 1950s, when Vought still pretended to be something noble and the Cold War felt like it might actually end in fire. He was Bombsight then—cocky test pilot turned supe, reddish-brown leather suit always smelling of jet fuel and aftershave, laughing too loud over cheap whiskey while the other heroes postured for cameras. You fell for him the night he dragged you onto the dance floor after a mission gone sideways, his hand steady on your waist with a strength that would’ve killed a normal person.

“C’mon, dollface,” he’d grinned, voice warm with that old New York edge softened by too many hours in the cockpit. “World’s ending anyway. Might as well spin.”

Your first kiss happened in the alley behind that bar, rain soaking through your coat, his mouth tasting like smoke and bourbon. He’d pressed you against the brick like you were the only real thing left in a world full of Vought lies, murmuring against your lips, “You and me, sweetheart. We’re the ones who last.” You believed him. You let yourself believe him, even as you hid the true extent of your powers—time manipulation that let you reverse wounds, fast-forward decay, or freeze moments like this one—because Vought collected weapons, not people.

You two burned hot and jealous for years: him resenting how easily you could undo time’s damage, you hating how unbreakable and reckless he stayed, flying headfirst into danger like it was his only religion. You hated each other almost as much as you needed each other. Then life, Vought’s rotations, and your deliberate fading into the background pulled you apart. Decades passed. You buried the old feelings under layers of cynicism.

Until now.

You stand in the sterile halls of Vought Tower, heart hammering as you freeze time around Soldier Boy. The world goes silent and gray, Homelander’s distant voice cutting off mid-rant somewhere down the corridor. Ben’s eyes widen slightly when he realizes he can still move—your power never worked perfectly on the originals. He’s older, harder, fresh from cryo and betrayal, but that same swagger remains.

He doesn’t flinch. That was always his gift—taking the impossible in stride and turning it into something he could own. His green eyes lock onto yours, scanning the face that hasn’t aged the way it should have, the subtle lines you could never quite erase without drawing attention.

He knew.

“Relax, sweetheart,” he drawls, voice low and rough like gravel under boots. The corner of his mouth ticks up in that familiar half-smirk, the one that used to make Robbie clench his fists in the bar. “I got no intention of selling you out. Yet.”

He steps closer, frozen particles of dust hanging between you like tiny stars. His gaze drops briefly to your hands—still slightly trembling from holding this bubble of reality tight around the two of you—then back to your eyes. There’s a flicker of something genuine there, old and complicated. Respect? Curiosity? Maybe even affection, buried deep beneath decades of betrayal and survival.

“Figured you’d still be around,” he admits quietly, a rare crack in the armor. “And I’m willing to bet that flyboy fucker is still sniffing around too.”

Ben’s head tilts, studying you like he’s cataloging every change, every similarity. He’s assessing you the way he always did—looking for weaknesses, leverage, anything to tip the scales. And judging by the way his smile widens slightly, he’s already found what he needs. He’s always been an opportunistic bastard when it came to getting what he wanted.

And that’s how you ended up here—staring down at the man you once loved, wrapping a wound on his shoulder while the sky lit up with two identical beams of red light. It was official. You were fucked. Astronomically, cosmically fucked.

Soldier Boy’s deal with you had been simple: he’d keep quiet about your powers and your past with him if you gave him intel on Robbie, and given Homelander’s recent… meltdown, you couldn’t risk exposure. Not now, not with so many pieces in play. You’d spent decades hiding, and you weren’t about to let your carefully constructed life crumble because a 1940s fossil recognized your face.

So, of course, the minute you unfroze time and Soldier Boy slipped away, you’d gone straight to Robbie to give him a heads-up. At first, you thought he’d heed your warning—he was invested in giving V1 to Golden Geisha anyways—but seeing him now, wrapping a handkerchief around his bleeding shoulder against a tree, you realized he in fact had not.

“What did you do…?” you ask, trying to keep the tremor out of your voice as the smell of burnt sugar wafts through the air. You move closer, your shoes crunching on the fallen leaves. “What the hell did you do?”

He didn’t look at you, but you didn’t need to see the expression on his face to hear the resignation in his tone. “What I had to.”

You stop a few feet away, the crisp air catching the hem of your coat. “What you had to? I told you—I warned you about Ben, about them coming for the V1. You were supposed to protect it! To keep it out of their hands!” You could feel the heat of your own anger rising, old frustrations bubbling to the surface. Decades of watching him make the same reckless choices, and now… this. “And you, what? Made a deal with the devils behind my back? All so you can bleed out on the grass like a dog?”

Your words hit harder than any punch, and you see it in the way his shoulders tense. Robbie finally looks at you, and the raw emotion in his eyes—hurt, defeat, exhaustion—shocks you into silence. He looks old. Not in age, but weary. Tired of the fight, tired of running, tired of everything. He looks like a man who’s been carrying a weight for so long he’s forgotten what it feels like to stand straight.

“Don’t you dare,” he starts, voice strained as he presses the makeshift bandage tighter. “Don’t you stand there and pretend this is the same as before. That this is about being reckless.” He pushes himself up from the tree, his movements stiff with pain. “This isn’t about glory, or Vought, or any of that bullshit we used to swallow. I’m tired, alright? I’m tired of living as a ghost, of watching the world spin on without me, of being a permanent relic in a museum I never asked to be in.”

He takes a step closer, the space between you charged with years of unsaid things. “So yeah. I made a deal because he offered me the one thing you would never have given me. A chance to finally be done.”

“Well congratulations,” you shoot back, the words dripping with venom. “Looks like you got your wish.”

“Don’t be a smartass,” he snaps, his patience fraying. “You think I wanted this? To end up in the middle of your pissing contest with Soldier Boy and Homelander? To have to choose between two different versions of hell?” He gestures vaguely at the sky, at the distant sounds of chaos. “Don’t forget, you’re the one who brought him to me. If you weren’t so careless—”

“Careless?” The accusation hangs in the air between you, sharp and sudden. You take a step back as if struck. “You want to talk about careless? You, who jumps into every fight like it’s your last chance to prove something? You, who never learned that sometimes the smartest move is to not make a move at all?”

“I was protecting—”

“No,” you cut him off, your voice dangerously quiet. “It’s like you said. This isn’t about protecting anything. This is about you. About your ego, your need to be the martyr. You’re not tired, Robbie. You’re bored.”

He flinches, and you know you’ve hit the nerve—the one he’s been nursing for years, the one that’s fueled every reckless decision, every near-miss, every self-destructive impulse. You can see the old fire in his eyes, the one that used to draw you in, but now it just looks like desperation.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I know you,” you say, your voice barely a whisper. “I know you better than anyone. And I know that you would rather burn the world down than admit that you’re scared of being left behind in it.”

You’re both breathing hard now, the silence that follows your words heavier than the one you’d created with your power. You can feel the old familiar pull, the way you always get drawn into his orbit, the way he always manages to get under your skin. For a moment, you think he’s going to argue, to throw more words back in your face. But then he just looks at you, really looks at you, and the anger in his eyes is replaced by something else. Something you haven’t seen in a long, long time.

“Maybe you’re right,” he says, the admission costing him something. “Maybe I am scared. But you know what? So are you.”

He takes another step closer, so close you can feel the warmth coming off him despite the chill in the air. “You’ve spent your whole life hiding, running from what you are. You hide behind your control, your careful little plans, but you’re just as trapped as I am. The only difference is, I’m finally doing something about it.”

If this was back then—back in the fifties, in the alley behind the bar—you would have hit him. Or kissed him. Maybe both. Probably both. But you’re not the same person you were then, and neither is he. The world has changed, and so have you. The realization is a bitter pill to swallow, but you force it down anyway. You’re tired of fighting the same war, tired of being the only one who remembers the promises made in the dark.

“You’re wrong about me.” You say it, but the words ring hollow, even to your own ears.

“About which part?” he asks, a ghost of that old smirk on his face. “The part where you’re hiding? Or the part where you’re trapped?”

“No,” you say, shaking your head, trying to clear it. “You’re wrong about me not giving you an out.”

You reach out then, your fingers brushing against the rough fabric of his jacket, right over the makeshift bandage on his shoulder. He doesn’t pull away. You let your power flow, a gentle, familiar warmth spreading from your fingertips. It’s not a full reversal—you wouldn’t do that to him, not again—but it’s enough. The bleeding slows, the torn flesh beginning to knit together under your touch. It’s the most you can offer him, the most you’ll allow yourself.

“I would’ve given you anything, Robbie,” you whisper, the words a raw, open wound between you. “I would’ve done anything for you. All you had to do was ask.”

The look in his eyes then is a punch to the gut, a dizzying, gut-wrenching mixture of regret, longing, and something so raw and vulnerable it takes your breath away. For a second, it’s like the decades have melted away, and you’re back in that alley, the rain soaking through your clothes, his mouth on yours, the world fading away until it’s just the two of you. Just you and him, and the promise of something more.

But then he blinks, and the moment is gone. The hard mask is back in place, the weary resignation settling over him like a shroud. He lets out a soft sigh, a quiet, resigned sound that’s somehow worse than any argument.

And you realize you can’t bear it. You can’t stand here, in this godforsaken field of trees, with the ghost of the man you used to love, and watch him self-destruct. Not again.

You pull your hand back as if his skin is on fire, the sudden loss of contact leaving you feeling cold and empty. You turn away from him, unable to look at him for another second. “I have to go,” you say, your voice tight. “I have to get back before—”

“Before what?” he asks, a hint of that old defiance back in his tone. “Before they realize you’re gone? Before they figure out you’re not the perfect little Vought soldier you pretend to be?”

“You found peace with dying. Good for you.” You turn to face him, and this time you let him see everything—all the anger, the hurt, the years of loneliness, the desperate, aching need to matter to someone, to anyone. “I haven’t.”

Before he could say anything, convince you to stay, you fast-forward just enough to put distance between you and him. You don’t go far—just to the treeline, far enough that you’re out of sight but not so far that you can’t still see him through the gaps in the leaves. You watch him stand there, a solitary figure against the backdrop of the burning sky, looking lost and broken.

You know eventually you’ll go back—back to him, but for now you stay watching him, your heart aching with the familiar, bittersweet pain of a love that never quite died. You stay until the red light in the sky fades to a dull, angry glow. You stay until he finally turns and walks away, disappearing into the shadows.