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Time After Time – Chapter 12

Summary: Unable to control your abilities, you’re stuck in the present with Billy Butcher, his team, and America’s first asshole. At this point, you’ve become Soldier Boy’s personal punching bag. But when an accident leaves you stranded in 1942, you run into a familiar face and suddenly rely on your future tormentor’s help as your only hope.

Pairing: Soldier Boy x supe!Reader

Warnings: 18+ for language, violence & a tiny bit of hate smut (Soldier Boy x Crimson Countess), flashbacks to 1944, 1969 & 1983, SB being his charming self and everything that comes with it, drug use, graphic Compound V injection, the Nazi Voughts, nihilistic themes, angst/hurt/heartbreak

Word Count: 13.7k

Posted on Patreon May 16, 2025

A/N: Welcome to the Eras Tour (Soldier Boy's Version) 🦅💚😂 Wanna see how the man, the myth, the monster was made? Welp, this is the rise and fall of Soldier Boy aka an introspection how Ben became such an insufferable ass. First part, I went full Captain America: First Avenger – just the evil Nazi edition. We also have the first appearance of The Legend (who's slightly aged up for this lol – couldn't resist putting him in, sue me 😝) and Stan Edgar. Plus, special appearances by: Led Zeppelin and Cyndi fucking Lauper! GAAAAH!!!)

PS: Getting to everyone's comments soon! Currently sitting here with a fever and wondering when life will stop coming at me lol. Miss you guys!!! 🩵

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Chapter 12: You're Not Just a Man, You're a Monument!

1944

Ben hadn’t done a lot of things in his life that amounted to much.

He flunked out of one of the most prestigious boarding schools in the country, had two fistfights (one outside a bar and one inside a country club), and once got thrown out of a brothel. He’d watched a war from too far away, standing in his father’s study while the steel contracts rolled in and the workers bled for the war effort – not him.

And there was also a string of women he couldn’t remember and one he couldn’t forget, no matter how hard he tried.

But this was supposed to be different. It was supposed to mean something.

Ben was dressed like a soldier – clean-pressed uniform, boots shined, buttons in place – but he’d never felt less like one. No scars. No dirt. No blood on his hands. Just a rich kid from Pennsylvania, the son of a steel mill asshole who thought service was a respectable PR move.

“Be a goddamn man for once.”

But Ben wanted to be more than just a son who his father was hoping would die in the trenches. He had always claimed Ben wouldn’t last a week on the frontlines and embarrass the family name on top of it. So, Ben had gone out of his way to do this without his father’s damn blessing.

With backdoor handshakes and the right kind of men in uniform. With whispers passed between scotch glasses and cigar smoke. His father had always said power was built on deals like that – so Ben had finally made one himself.

“You want to carve out your own way, son?” General Hardwick had asked him at his father’s Fourth of July party two years ago. “I might have something for you. Pays well. It’s a special project for men who don’t mind gettin’ their hands a little dirty.”

They needed a body, and he needed a reason to exist, so Ben had said yes before the man even finished the entire pitch.

Because he knew his father would’ve never approved. Not because he feared for Ben’s life – but because he would’ve seen it for what it was.

Desperation. Weakness. Cowardice.

But Ben saw it as his salvation: Power. Invincibility. Legacy. A chance to be something his father never was – something greater. The perfect American soldier. The symbol of a new era.

At least, that’s how a room full of army generals had sold it to him.

They’d told him it would be like going to sleep. Like closing his eyes, and waking up different. Better. Stronger. That was the goddamn promise.

Ben hadn’t entirely believed them. It sounded too good to be true. And still, he’d nodded anyway, jaw squared, heart slamming so hard in his chest it might’ve cracked ribs. Because in the end, it didn’t matter – he had already lost everything he ever held dear.

This was his last goddamn chance, the only door left open for him to be someone worth remembering.

The walls of the facility got colder the deeper he went, a chill settling in his bones. Concrete echoed under his boots as two soldiers, silent and purposeful, flanked him like they were escorting a prisoner – not a volunteer.

Ben had stopped asking them questions two hallways ago. It didn’t matter. They weren’t listening anyway.

He flexed his hands as he walked, trying to keep the blood flowing. He could still feel the slight tremble in his fingers, even if he kept them balled into loose fists. He doubted anyone noticed. He tried to convince himself he wasn’t nervous, but that was a damn lie, wasn’t it?

You wanted this, he reminded himself. You begged for it. You said you were ready.

But that was before he was swallowed by barbed wire and reinforced walls.

Before he saw the guards.

Before he caught the smell of something burnt into the concrete that never quite left.

This place didn’t feel like a lab. It felt like a bunker that had forgotten what daylight looked like – a prison. No windows. No clocks. Every door they passed was bolted shut. The smell of formaldehyde and bleach made his skin crawl – too clean and empty to feel safe.

From farther down the hall, he could hear two men whispering:

“–last one didn’t make it past the third minute. Seizure, cranial pressure–”

“Shh, not now. He’s here.”

Ben’s spine straightened, jaw locking tight.

They thought he was too dumb to hear them. Too dumb to understand. Just some steel mill owner’s son with a chip on his shoulder and nothing to lose – a disposable rich boy with something to prove.

The two soldiers finally stopped at a sealed door with a warningly blinking red light above. They buzzed him in with a clattering of mechanical locks and waved him through.

Inside, Ben was met with brass, scientists, a few men in white coats holding clipboards and murmuring numbers, and the Voughts – two scientists that had recently defected from Germany. None of them looked up as he stepped forward.

They didn’t expect much of him. He could see it in their eyes, in the way Klara Vought crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair, smirking like she could smell the fear on him.

She was tall, elegant, sharp around the edges. There was too much control in her gaze, too much certainty in the way she took stock of him. Like she was already filing him away as either a success or a loss.

Her husband, Frederick, barely looked up from the clipboard he was scribbling on, either. “Welcome, Mr. Brooks. Take a seat,” he offered. “We’ll begin the briefing.”

Much like his wife, Frederick Vought looked like a man carved from marble – too clean, too controlled. His German accent was faint but unmistakable, hiding behind certain vowels. He didn’t offer a hand. Didn’t smile. Just gestured toward a steel chair bolted to the floor like it might run off if they didn’t anchor it.

Ben sat, trying not to show how fast his heart was beating, keeping his posture straight as the whole room studied him like an animal in a cage.

“Do you understand what we’re doing here, Mr. Brooks?” Frederick asked, opening a folder with his name on it.

Subject 13 – Benjamin Brooks.

Ben licked his chapped lips, his mouth dry. “Making soldiers. That’s what you said.”

“Something like that,” Frederick hummed. “We’ve been reviewing your file. You scored well on resilience, tolerance to pain, skeletal integrity. Not particularly impressive academically, but that’s irrelevant. You’re here for your body, not your mind.”

Klara made a sound like she was suppressing a laugh.

Ben’s jaw clenched, but he held his chin high. He knew they thought he was stupid – and maybe he was for agreeing to this.

“We’re not looking for damn philosophers,” General Hardwick added gruffly. “We need results. Boots on the ground that don’t die.”

“Well, I did expect someone taller,” Klara chimed in with a smirk – like a cat watching a mouse pretend it wasn’t afraid.

But Ben kept his muscles still and smirked. “Guess we’ll see if height matters, doll.”

“Oh, it doesn’t,” she replied easily. “What matters is whether your bones hold together.”

He didn’t flinch – not visibly. But the words stuck in his gut.

Frederick was already speaking again, turning pages in a thick folder of charts and diagrams that looked more like the anatomy of animals than men. Scientific terms poured out like machine oil – dense, acrid, impossible to pin down.

Ben understood maybe ten percent of it.

“We’ve had… partial success,” Frederick said smoothly. “Compound V is unstable in most adult systems. But you show exceptional tolerance markers. Similar to Subject Zero.”

Ben cleared the lump in his throat. “Subject Zero?”

Klara answered with a smile and a mock wave of her hand, crossing her legs. “Me. Surprise.”

That threw him for a beat.

He’d heard rumors about someone called Liberty – a woman who tore through battlefields like a storm. But he’d assumed she was a story. A pinup fantasy for soldiers with too many hours between firefights.

Ben’s gaze snapped back to Klara. She looked ordinary. Pretty, in that 1940s lipstick-and-waist-cinch kind of way. But he hadn’t missed the way the whole room looked at her – not with awe but pride. She wasn’t just part of the program. She was the goddamn program.

“The serum was… refined. Stabilized,” Frederick added.

“Refined,” Ben repeated, trying to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. “So, what, she’s the prototype?”

“She’s the future,” Frederick said simply. “And so might you be.”

Might. That word curled like smoke in Ben’s stomach.

“You’ve been screened. Physically, genetically, you are an ideal candidate. If this works, you'll be our first success outside controlled German trials,” Frederick continued.

“First success?” Ben asked, keeping his voice neutral. “What happened to the others?”

“Statistically irrelevant,” Frederick answered swiftly. “You’re not them. And unlike the others, you were selected. Hand-picked.”

“Most subjects barely made it past organ failure,” Klara added with a dismissive giggle like she was aiming to mess with him. “All previous ones died within minutes. Hemorrhaging. Cardiac arrest. Some even more violently than that.”

Ben didn’t react. He wasn’t sure he could afford it, but a shiver still ran down his spine nonetheless.

“We’ll begin with the injection after this briefing. You’ll be closely monitored, of course,” Frederick said, not elaborating on his wife’s taunts. “It will be intravenous. Rapid bloodstream integration. Your tissues will undergo an aggressive regenerative cascade – break down, rebuild. Organs will momentarily stress, then adjust. You may feel... discomfort.”

Ben raised an eyebrow. “Discomfort?”

“You may lose consciousness,” Klara clarified. “Or scream. That’s normal.”

He forced a casual shrug and a cocky smile, even though his stomach churned. “That’s fine. I’ve had hangovers worse than that.”

Frederick barely looked at him. “The serum is designed to alter your biology. It’s not just strength. It’s adaptive cellular optimization. Density manipulation. Accelerated healing. Auditory and visual acuity. Potential cognitive enhancement.”

He sounded like a goddamn textbook– one with a lot of big words.

“Right,” Ben said, smacking his lips. “So no more catching colds.”

“Your immune system will kill a virus before it finishes replicating,” Klara said, amused. “Your bones could stop a bullet. Your muscles will triple in strength without increasing in size. Your heart will be... tested.”

“Tested?”

Klara’s smile didn’t reach her eyes. “You’ll see.”

Ben caught a look between the two of them – barely a glance but enough. It was the kind of exchange scientists made when they’d seen what had come before – when they were still pretending the next experiment might not end the same way.

“The serum rewrites you,” Frederick explained proudly. “Not just your body. It makes you what you should have been. The best version.”

Ben looked down at his hands again, trying to control the tremble. “Sounds like a lot of poison for something that’s supposed to help.”

“Poison can be medicine,” Klara stated. “If you survive it.”

Frederick continued flipping pages like he hadn’t just described a dozen men dying on his table. “You’ll undergo rapid metabolic overhaul. Tissue degeneration followed by cellular regeneration. And yes, there will be pain. But afterward, you will have capabilities beyond conventional human limits.”

“How much pain?” Ben asked.

“Enough,” Klara replied. “But you’ll be stronger after. Think of it like being melted down and poured into a new mold. Like steel.”

Ben swallowed hard. “And if the mold doesn’t hold?”

Frederick smiled as if he’d made a joke. “Then you’ll have done your country a great service, young man.”

Ben was quiet for a moment. “You believe this can win the war?”

Frederick nodded surely. “Oh, it will end the war.”

“That’s why you’re here,” Klara said, voice almost gentle. “To become the kind of man who can’t be ignored anymore. You’ll never feel weakness again.”

Ben didn’t reply, but the words sank deep.

He could already feel it again – that same old, familiar pull in his gut he’d known since his childhood. That need to be something – someone. Not just a steel heir, not just a disappointment. Not the kid who never lived up to the family name. Not the one who flunked out of every damn thing he tried to take seriously. Not the guy who was left by someone he loved.

His father always said he was made soft by too much luxury. “All shine, no steel.”

Maybe this would finally prove otherwise.

This was his chance to be more than a shadow. To show them – his father, the world, himself – that he could matter. That he wasn’t just drifting.

No more being second-best.

No more being a failure.

No more almost.

Still, there was something strange in the way the staff avoided eye contact. The way two orderlies whispered just out of earshot and glanced at him like they were already mourning something. There were names crossed out in the folders on the table. Smudges of ink. Whole pages removed.

“And if I change my mind?” Ben asked and swallowed subtly, trying to keep it light. “I can still walk, right?”

There was a beat of silence before Frederick smiled thinly. “This facility is classified. No one walks out unaltered.”

Klara tilted her head, looking amused. “Besides, you don’t strike me as the quitting type, Benjamin.”

His heart pounded in his ribcage like it was trying to escape, but there was nowhere else to go. No way out now. Not unless he wanted to crawl out on hands and knees and let them all laugh behind his back – or get shot.

He couldn’t go back to Pennsylvania. Not to his father’s steel empire, to a house too big and quiet and full of disappointment. Not to a name that carried more weight than he did.

This was the only path left to prove he was something – a man forged like steel, not just born into it.

He’d signed the papers. He’d shaken the hands. And he’d sworn he was going to become the weapon they wanted – even if the man who woke up wasn’t him anymore.

Even if it killed him – especially then.

Ben stood when they told him to, the Voughts leading him to the injection chamber. It gleamed with chrome and was lined with medical instruments that looked more like torture devices than anything else.

It seemed like a goddamn morgue – metal table, thick straps, bright surgical lights overhead. A glass window lined one wall where he could just make out shadowy frames – doctors, generals, observers.

Ben adjusted the cuffs of his shirt as he sat down on the edge of the table, the fabric clinging faintly to his palms. Sweat – he hated that. It felt like weakness. Nervousness. But his pulse was undeniably high, and his jaw ached from how long he’d been grinding it.

They laid him flat on the table and strapped him down. The metal was cold and unkind beneath his back. He tried not to show how his hands flexed against the restraints.

“This will hurt,” Frederick said blandly. “But pain means it’s working.”

“You do want it to work, don’t you?” Klara smirked as she approached with the syringe – a gleaming metal cylinder far too large, filled with a glowing, poisonous blue-green liquid that seemed to pulse faintly in the light. She held it up like a trophy.

Ben gave a nod, but on the inside, he wasn’t sure if he just wanted to die quickly.

“You’re lucky,” she said, her voice seductive enough to brush the air like a secret. “I was the first. The only one to survive. And I was told I was too delicate, too emotional. But now? Now I could tear this building in half if I wanted to.”

Ben stared at her. She still looked human – beautiful, poised. But her eyes were sharp glass. There was nothing soft left in them.

“Begin the procedure,” her husband ordered her.

And then, she slid the needle into his arm without ceremony.

The first thing Ben felt was fucking fire.

Not like a normal injection. It wasn’t heat. It wasn’t a slow burn, not a warm spread of power – it was burning from the inside out. It was violence. Lightning under the skin. A thousand electric knives cutting their way through muscle, sinew, bone.

Every vein lit up like it was being filled with acid. His spine snapped straight, and his vision flashed white as his muscles seized and his eyes rolled back. He was aware of every inch of himself. The pressure building inside his skull. The joints in his fingers cracking and popping like they were being pulled apart. His blood felt like it was boiling.

He could feel himself tearing – changing, as if the serum was clawing through his body, unmaking and rebuilding all at once.

Bones throbbed. Skin screamed. Nerves flared. Something white-hot tore loose in his mind.

And then, through all the noise and the blur and the agony and the ringing in his ears, suddenly there was you.

At first only your silhouette, black and jagged at the edges against the blinding lights. But then you approached, your face becoming so clear and soft it felt like you were real – like you came back to him just so he wouldn’t be alone and scared anymore.

You crouched down next to him, hand reaching out to caress his cheek, fingers carding through his sweat-drenched hair. Your eyes were gentle, your voice even gentler. “Shh, baby, it’s okay. You’re gonna be alright. Trust me. It’ll be fine. Just relax for me, okay? You’re stronger than you know, Ben.”

“What are you doing here?” he murmured deliriously, gritting the words out between bursts of excruciating pain. He wasn’t even sure if he said them out loud or if he was imagining the whole thing.

He heard his own voice, somewhere far away, screaming – maybe begging for mercy. Maybe both.

Stranger’s hands then gripped his shoulders. “He’s seizing–”

“No,” Klara Vought’s voice snapped from somewhere in the room, colder than ice. “He’s adapting.”

You stroked his face and gripped his hand tightly, kissing his knuckles like he was a sick child in bed with a terrible fever. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m with you. Always.”

And the world faded to black then.

Ben could still feel the needle when his eyes fluttered open again.

But maybe he was imagining it – the phantom sting buried somewhere beneath his skin, pulsing in rhythm with his heartbeat or whatever had replaced it. His body didn’t feel like his anymore.

One of the nurses noticed with wide eyes when the restraints creaked, and Ben pulled against the strap on his right wrist.

It snapped.

The others followed in seconds, metal bands twisting like tinfoil. He sat up slowly, breathing hard. His shirt stuck to him with sweat. His mouth tasted like blood and metal. His hearing was sharp – too sharp. He could hear a light flickering three rooms away. Someone chewing gum down the hallway. A fly buzzing behind the window panel.

But the room was swimming, eyes unable to focus. It was too much and all at once.

His heart hammered in his chest, pulsing too fast. His muscles clenched and shifted, as if they were too tight for his body to contain anymore. Every cell of his felt louder. Everything was spinning, his skull pounding like something inside was trying to crawl out.

Bones too big for his frame. Skin too tight for his muscles. Blood too hot.

“Easy,” someone barked.

Ben couldn’t see them. Could barely see anything at all.

He rolled onto his side, retching dryly. His stomach had already emptied itself sometime before the blackout.

Voices then blurred above him, needles being jabbed into his arm again and drawing blood. They were testing him like he was a lab rat.

The pain was still there, humming in the background like white noise. He could feel the pressure building inside him, his body fighting against itself, as if trying to break free of whatever this was.

“Take deep breaths,” Frederick Vought’s voice cut through the fog. “It will pass. The initial shock is the most difficult. Just focus on stabilizing your breathing.”

But all Ben could feel was the power coursing through his veins – raw and uncontrollable. His fists clenched at his sides, every nerve alive, every muscle twitching with newfound energy.

There was nothing like this. Nothing he’d ever experienced before. It was as if his body had become an engine, a machine that wasn’t used to running this fast.

The sensation of power was intoxicating – and terrifying. His pulse roared like a flood breaking through a dam. His fingers tingled with electricity, his body humming with energy he didn’t think he could control.

Heat and force without focus.

He gritted his teeth and stumbled to his feet, trying to steady himself on the table, but everything around him seemed to tilt. He didn’t even notice the metal warping in his grip. His vision blurred, and he staggered forward, fighting the overwhelming urge to collapse. His legs felt like they might buckle under him at any given moment.

Ben then rolled his shoulders and something popped. The pressure eased just enough for him to speak.

“Where’s the head? I need a minute,” he rasped, but his voice sounded… wrong. Deeper. Rougher. Like he’d smoked two packs, drank a whole bottle of his father’s best bourbon, and swallowed the glass after.

“Second hallway,” Klara said, perfectly calm and still like a statue waiting to judge him. She observed him like a specimen in a jar. “Door with the red handle.”

No one followed him, but he felt their eyes on him long after he left the room.

Ben barely made it inside without knocking the door clean off its hinges. The rusted lock groaned under the twist of his wrist. His boots hit the ground too hard. His fingers twitched like they wanted to pull something apart just for the release. He slammed the door shut behind him, the noise echoing too loud in the empty space.

The bathroom reeked of ammonia, damp concrete, and mildew – the kind of place no one had cleaned properly since the Depression. A single lightbulb flickered above him like it might die, casting shadows on the stained walls.

The mirror above the sink was clouded with age – spotted, warped, smudged with fingerprints and the ghosts of men who’d probably stood where he was now. Before they failed the serum. Before they were zipped into bags and hauled out the back door under the cover of night.

His boots dragged as he stumbled forward, bracing himself with shaking hands against the sink. The old porcelain creaked beneath his grip and cracked. Sharp edges then crumbled in his palms, falling to the ground. He hadn’t even goddamn tried to break it.

“Shit,” he muttered as he quickly stepped back in shock – or horror. He wasn’t sure which yet.

This wasn’t what he had expected. This wasn’t what he had imagined when he’d volunteered for this. He thought he was doing it to prove something, but now, with this indescribable, untamable power coursing through him, he was realizing how little he knew what exactly he’d gotten into.

His mind was spinning, flooded with a torrent of confusion, fear, and an unexpected sense of disappointment. The poison in his veins was changing him, but he wasn’t sure he still wanted this change. Ben didn’t know if he could handle it, still feeling it move under his skin like a parasite.

The heat. The hum. The static buzz of something not quite human rushing through his veins.

They said it would be a miracle. A new frontier for mankind. The dawn of the American super soldier. But he didn’t feel like a goddamn miracle. He felt like something had crawled inside him and started screaming.

This power was like a wildfire, and he wasn’t sure how long he could keep it from burning everything to ashes and smoke around him.

He gritted his teeth and ran a hand through his hair, trying to shake the ringing in his skull. He steadied himself on the sink with more care this time and took in his reflection.

The man staring back at him looked like a myth. It showed a face he knew but didn’t recognize anymore. His pupils were dilated, blown wide, rimmed by a startling clarity in the whites of his eyes.

His jaw looked sharper, his shoulders broader, like he’d been carved out of stone. Even his scars were fading – the ones he’d earned the hard and tough way. His skin looked tighter over his muscles, like it had been pulled a little too far, blood vessels glowing faintly blue beneath it. His veins bulged with something not quite natural.

He could feel his body calculating. As if every step, every breath, every twitch of his fingers was being optimized by something foreign now living in his bloodstream.

Everything inside of him had been replaced with something smoother. Artificial. Altered. Angry.

He pressed his forehead against the cool glass of the mirror and didn’t move for a long moment. His thoughts were too scattered, too clouded. But through the haze, something broke through.

You.

God, he hadn’t thought about you in years. Had trained himself not to. Had built walls inside his mind where your name couldn’t echo. You were a ghost. A heartbreak. A closed chapter.

He’d buried you like everything else. Like his mother. Like his dreams. Like his humanity. Like the idea that he might actually deserve love. But now, in this moment, with his blood still singing from whatever the hell they’d done to him, you were suddenly everywhere.

The pieces were clicking now.

Every excuse. Every little dodge. He’d been too blinded by love to see it for what it was.

“I don’t… bruise easily, you know? Kinda neat…”

“Good genes.”

“Oh, uh, adrenaline… I guess. Didn’t really think about it.”

“Who knows? Maybe I’m a witch.”

You’d laughed when you said that last one, like it was a joke only you understood.

But you were like this, weren’t you? Like him.

His head was pounding, memories firing off like bullets.

He remembered how you carried a whole crate of firebricks like it was nothing. When Ben had tried lifting it, he could barely do it without his knees giving in.

He remembered how you once sliced your palm on a broken bottle in the shed and it didn’t bleed more than a mere paper cut – if at all. You giggled and told him not to worry about it. It hadn’t been that deep. You’d been lucky.

He remembered how you’d never bruised, no matter how rough things got in bed. He had always chalked it up to your spirit, your fire, your grit.

But it had been more than that, hadn’t it?

And God help him, he had believed you. Had needed to.

Because he was in love.

Because he was a goddamn idiot.

For almost two years, he had told himself you didn’t love him. That you changed your mind. Had convinced himself you ran because you were scared or selfish or worse – that he wasn’t enough. That he was weak.

And then, the night you disappeared came rushing back to him.

How his father, the old bastard, had grabbed you like you were something to claim. How you then almost shattered his wrist and fought him off – a guy twice your size.

And Ben hadn’t stopped you. Hell, he’d wanted you to do worse. He’d never questioned it – not until now.

He remembered how he’d confessed everything then that night in the barn. That he loved you. That he wanted to marry you and build something new – run as far and fast as you could from the ghosts of both your pasts.

But maybe you couldn’t. Was that the real reason you left? That thing he felt inside of himself now?

“Ben, I can’t.”

“You don’t even know me.”

“You don’t know what you’re getting into here.”

You were different, weren’t you? But you were also different from that cold woman in the lab out there. Your eyes had always been soft, your voice had always been kind, and your touch had always been gentle.

He squeezed his eyes shut and fought back the tears as more memories flooded his mind.

The feeling of you. The warmth in his chest. The scent of your hair. That breathy laugh you used to hide behind your hand like he hadn’t already branded the sound of it into his mind.

You, running barefoot in that yellow sundress through the orchard by the lake.

You, stealing his cigarettes when he’d looked away for two seconds.

You, singing by the piano.

You, crying in the barn.

You, gone.

Why did you leave him? Why couldn’t you stay?

Ben always knew you’d been running from something. Someone. He’d never pried too much, sensing your fear, but after you were gone, he’d tried to find you. Looked for you for months. Hired a private investigator, but no one ever found someone by your first name, your birthday – no one in New York or anywhere else in the world.

You were a ghost. Someone who shouldn’t have existed.

And maybe, whoever you’d been running from, were the same people that waited for him outside this bathroom now. Had you been running from them?

All he’d wanted for the past two years was to find a way to get you back. And a small part of him thought this might be the way – if he had been like this back then, stronger, unbreakable, then maybe you would’ve stayed. Maybe he would’ve been finally good enough.

But now he wasn’t so sure this had been the reason why you’d been running in the first place. Why had you never told him?

How was it even possible? According to the scientists out there, someone like you shouldn’t have existed – not yet.

No survivors.

But why the hell did it feel like he was only just now starting to see you clearly for the very first time?

Ben grabbed a shard of broken porcelain from the floor. His hand trembled as he brought it to his palm and hesitated for a moment, but then he pressed – hard. It barely did anything. Another piece chipped off before he managed the smallest nick. A single drop of blood appeared before the skin knitted itself back together before his eyes – fast, precise, flawless.

His breath caught in his throat as he staggered back from the sink, heart hammering in his chest with a force that could shatter concrete. He barely noticed how his breathing came faster now, how the walls around him seemed to close in.

And then, there you were – in the mirror behind him, sharper and realer than you had any right to be.

Your palm touched his shoulder, and he felt it – that familiar warmth that always gave him comfort. That always made him feel like he was home and less alone. But as he glanced behind him, there was no one there.

He missed you. God, he fucking missed you.

He wished you were here. You’d know what to do and what to say. You’d hold his hand and tell him it was okay to be scared. That he was strong. That he didn’t need to do this. That he was enough – that he would’ve been enough exactly the way he’d been.

But you weren’t here. You hadn’t been here for a long time.

Ben returned to the testing chamber on steadier legs, though every inch of him still felt coiled – like a gun that hadn’t gone off yet. There was an unknown hunger inside him now urging him to do something – to fight, to tear, to break. The thought scraped against his brain like claws against steeled walls.

A violent force with no outlet.

Klara raised an eyebrow when he entered. “You’re adjusting faster than expected.”

Ben leaned against the wall, arms crossed – carefully, deliberately, making sure not to press hard enough to shatter the tiles or anything else.

“You said I’d feel stronger. You didn’t say it’d feel like someone else’s bones inside of me,” Ben noted and tried to hide the bitterness in his voice.

Frederick didn’t look up from his notes. “Your cells are adapting. The Compound V is aggressive, but selective. It rewrites everything – efficiently.”

“Yeah,” Ben muttered. “Efficient’s one word for it.”

“You’ll feel imbalance for a few days,” Klara said smoothly. “Then your body will stabilize. You’ll understand your strength better.”

“Have you tested that strength yet?” he asked. “Or am I the guinea pig for that part too?”

Klara didn’t flinch. “You’re not a guinea pig. You’re the evolution.”

“Lucky me,” Ben scoffed under his breath.

Frederick looked up now. “Your vitals are good. Recovery is above expectations. How are your hands? Any numbness? Residual tremors?”

“No.”

“Any double vision?”

“No.”

“You appear slightly flushed. Any nausea?”

Ben exhaled an exhaustive sigh. “Only from the stench of your fucking cologne.”

Frederick blinked at first and then chuckled. “Sharper tongue. A side effect we didn’t anticipate. Emotional intensification could be worth tracking. Your brain chemistry is still in flux. Memory distortion is normal. Dreams, even hallucinations. We’ll monitor that.”

“Great,” Ben said flatly and subtly rolled his eyes back. “And how many more of me are you planning to make, huh?”

“None,” Klara said before Frederick could answer.

Ben stiffened unnoticeably, spine straightening.

“You were the goal,” she said. “A living, breathing prototype. One we could unleash without setting the world on fire – at least, not before we want to.”

Frederick added, “It isn’t a formula. It’s a trial by fire. Everyone else who’s tried has died.”

Everyone else. That stuck in Ben’s brain like a splinter.

“We want the public to get used to the idea of someone like you first before we begin with Phase Two,” Klara continued.

Ben cocked an eyebrow. “Phase Two?”

Klara nodded and smiled. “Children.”

“You wanna put this shit in little kids?”

Frederick answered in that typical scientist-without-feelings tone, “The adult body is not an ideal and viable host for the serum. Too many expected failures. We suspect better results with children. Their bodies are still more flexible. They adjust better to the changes.”

“It’s the future,” Klara said, smiling in that eerie way again that made his balls retreat into his body.

It’s sick, Ben thought. But he couldn’t bring himself to care enough to argue further. All he cared about was finding some answers.

Finding you.

Klara stepped closer to him, smirking and watching him like he was a caged tiger in a circus. “You okay? You seem… agitated.”

“‘M fine.” He bit the inside of his cheek and tried to look unconcerned. “So no one ever survived outside your labs? No accidents? No freak cases out in the wild? No one ever escaped from the camps? I don’t know… back in Germany? France, maybe?”

“No,” Klara said firmly. “If there were, we would know.”

Fortunately, they thought he was just curious – just trying to understand the scope of what he’d volunteered for.

Good.

He didn’t want them asking why his questions had a shape. Why his thoughts had a face. He didn’t trust them enough to tell them anything more.

But Ben knew that there was still you – out there, somewhere.

1969

It had been twenty-five years of this fucking shit.

The big war was long over, the headlines yellowed, and the world had moved on to sex, drugs, and rock music. But Ben was still here – crowned a hero as Soldier Boy and still suiting up, still smiling for the cameras, still pretending any of it fucking mattered.

Vought established itself as a company and looked different now. Shinier. Less fucking German.

The original two Voughts had gone underground some time ago like the cowards they were – and good fucking riddance. Ben never could stand their bullshit. Their Nazi roots had been harder to bleach out of public record than blood from a white uniform, and no one at corporate liked being reminded of the company’s roots in war crimes and eugenics. So they paved over it with a star-spangled rebrand.

Welcome to Vought-American. Land of the free, home of the sanitized PR rollout.

But the rot was still there – just deeper now. Smarter. Slicker.

Supes were no longer about war efforts or national morale – they were about fucking market share: Movie deals, cereal endorsements, and action figures.

The kicker? They told the public people were fucking born this way. Made him do a whole fake fucking biopic about how he realized as a young boy that he was fucking special – God-given superpowers.

Ben still snorted whenever he reminded himself of that one.

Word around headquarters was that the eggheads in R&D even finally went through with it and started injecting infants with this shit, not just young adults and late teens. Whispered projects. Off-the-books trials. A new generation of supes bred in labs, not born from battlefield legacy.

It made his skin crawl. He didn’t trust any of it. Especially since nobody told him a damn thing anymore – not that he cared enough to ask about it anyway.

Ben kept his head down. Showed up. Played their games. Did the commercials. Starred in the propaganda films. Let them dress him up and wheel him out like a circus act. Soldier Boy had been the face of it all, pretending like it was still worth something. At least the fucking money was good.

Because what the hell else was he supposed to do? America had moved on – but Ben fucking hadn’t.

Now he had a new manager, too. Some fast-talking, cigar-chomping asshole in bell bottoms and rhinestone-studded suede jackets who went by The Legend. The kind of guy who knew every casting couch in L.A. and kept a Rolodex of starlets like baseball cards. Barely twenty-one but already thought he was the biggest shot in all of Hollywood. Vought loved him and figured he’d bring more youthful ideas to the table.

More movies, more fame, more everything.

Ben didn’t care about any of that shit, though, as long as the checks kept coming, but if he had to sit through one more meeting about toothpaste endorsements with a fucking cartoon eagle, he was going to put someone through a goddamn window.

Ben finished a smoke outside Legend’s office in Los Angeles, the ember glowing in the night as he mindlessly flicked the Zippo in his hand with a bitterness that hadn’t dulled since fucking ‘44. He tossed the cigarette butt onto the pavement and ground it out with his boot before making his way inside.

He shoved open the door and found his manager behind a desk stacked with glossy promotional photos and scripts for movies Ben didn’t give two shits about.

“You’re late, asshole,” Legend barked, not looking up.

Ben rolled his eyes and dragged his leather jacket off, tossing it onto the couch beside him before flopping down like he couldn’t give a damn. The couch smelled like stale cologne and a decade’s worth of bad decisions.

Legend finally looked up, his eyes gleaming with that smug excitement. “Alright, Soldier Boy, listen up. We need to freshen up that image of yours. We’ve been riding on the same old shtick for too fucking long. You know how it is – the world’s changing. The kids are into new things. You gotta give ‘em something fresh.”

Ben was unimpressed. He just looked at the ceiling, letting the rambling words pass through him. The “kids” these days were a fucking joke. All they needed was a hero to cheer for. They wanted a goddamn fantasy – not real soldiers like him.

Ben was too old for this shit. Too fucking jaded. His fiftieth birthday was coming up and Vought still sold him to the public as a fucking thirty-year-old.

At least he still looked like one – barely aged a day since 1944.

His eyes glazed over as Legend rambled on, talking about movies, about starlets he could be “seen with” – like that would fucking help. Ben was only here to do his job, punch a few faces, make a few appearances, and roll in dollar bills with a bunch of women and coke. The rest was just fucking white noise.

“Alright, here’s the big one,” Legend said, leaning forward. His voice was lower now like he was sharing some big secret. “We’re putting together a team. A super team, if you will. It’s called Payback. We’re talking a group of supes, all under one banner. You’ll work with others, but you’re gonna be the face of it. New angle. Gotta get ahead of the game.”

“You want me to work with those fucking freaks?” Ben snorted and grabbed the bag of cocaine he knew Legend was hiding under his coffee table for guests.

Jesus fucking Christ, he needed something stronger than booze and nicotine for this kind of meeting.

The last thing he wanted was a bunch of second-rate heroes messing up his reputation. No one after him and Liberty had ever gotten the original formula of Compound V. All he’d gotten was incredible strength, durability, and enhanced senses – and thank fucking God for that. Because the other shit he’d seen walking out of those labs?

Fucking abominations.

Legend didn’t skip a beat, however. “Look, man, the Vietnam War is in full swing, and Uncle Sam wants to use you. Big PR move. Propaganda, morale boosting, all that good shit. You’re gonna help sell the war. After all those rumors about you and your government activities at protests, you’ll need this. Trust me.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Ben mumbled with an exhaustive sigh, already halfway tuning him out.

Instead, he snorted a line of coke off the back of his hand and leaned his head against the couch, the high burning its way through his sinuses and straight into his bloodstream. He closed his eyes and when he opened them again–

You.

There you were – like always. Sitting next to him, elbow resting on the back of the couch, legs bare and crossed like you had all the time in the world to sit here and fucking judge him.

“What the hell are you doing?” you asked, your voice sharp like a whip, and when he finally glanced at you, there it was – that same old look of disappointment in your eyes.

Ben’s throat went dry, averting his gaze. “Gettin’ fucking high, sweetheart,” he muttered under his breath, reaching for the bottle of whiskey next to him and taking a swig. “Just leave me alone.”

But you never did. His hallucination of you was more persistent and annoying than the real version of you ever had been.

“Cocaine? Again?” You clicked your tongue, that disapproving sound hitting him deeper than a punch ever could. “Is that really all you are now? Some washed-up poster boy with a coke problem and a pension for not giving a shit?”

When Ben dared to look at you again, his lips curled into a lazy grin. “Took you long enough, sweetheart. Missed you.”

Truthfully, this was the only part of his day he actually still looked forward to – talking to you.

But you didn’t smile. You never did anymore. “Don’t get fucking cute with me, Ben.”

“You know I only ever see you when I’m high,” he muttered as an excuse. “Only time you fuckin’ show up.”

“Because it’s the only time you actually still let yourself feel anything,” you shot back. “Look at you! The same old shit. Snorting up your life, pretending it doesn’t fucking matter. You don’t care about the people you’re supposed to protect, do you? You don’t care about anything anymore.”

Ben lit another cigarette, taking a long drag before exhaling slowly, green eyes focused on the smoke. “Yeah? And what good has giving a shit ever done me, huh?” he said, rubbing his jaw. “You still fucking left.”

You leaned forward, eyes sharp. “So you’re just giving up? What about the kids, Ben? The ones they’re injecting with V now. Babies. Children. You didn’t even fucking flinch when you heard it.”

“What the fuck you want me to do, huh?” His jaw tightened. “They don’t want a hero. They want a fuckin’ puppet. A good little soldier with a shiny shield and a fake smile.”

“They’re not waiting for the next war,” you went on. “They’re building the next generation of monsters. You think that serum didn’t screw you up? What the hell do you think it’ll do to kids?”

He blew out a stream of smoke. “Not my fuckin’ problem.”

You laughed, bitter and cold. “Of course not. Nothing’s your goddamn problem anymore, is it? Vietnam’s not your problem. The kids pumped full of V? Not your problem. The wreckage you leave behind every time you lose your fucking temper?”

He rolled his eyes and leaned his head back again. “You’re really laying it on thick today, sweetheart.”

“I wouldn’t have to if you weren’t so goddamn hollow,” you snapped.

He didn’t reply at first. Just stared at the ceiling, letting your voice echo in the back of his mind like a song he couldn’t turn off. There was no heat in his expression now. No anger. Just the kind of quiet that came from missing someone too long.

“You judging me,” he said after a moment, “is the only thing that still feels goddamn real.”

You softened slightly, enough for him to notice. “You were never this cruel,” you said. “Not really. Not before.”

He closed his eyes. “Yeah, well, I never was this lonely either.”

For a second, neither of you said anything.

“This isn’t what I fought for. It’s not what we fought for,” you said quietly but insistently.

“I know, sweetheart. I know…” he said softly and meant it.

Your image flickered slightly at the edges, the way it always did when the drugs started to wear off. He hated that. Hated watching you fade. It was like losing you all over again.

Then, just as he reached for another line, Legend’s voice sliced clean through the moment.

“Ben, I’m talkin’ about Led Zeppelin. You listening or just zoning the fuck out again?” Legend’s voice was loud and unrelenting. “Big gig in New York next week. A real scene. We’ll put your mug in the papers, get the hippies swooning.”

Ben blinked. The name hit like a hammer.

Led Zeppelin.

His hand froze mid-reach for the coke bag and whiskey. The memory rushed in without permission – you, stumbling into his arms in January of ‘42 with an odd t-shirt and a name on it that bore no meaning at the time. Just two words strung together that didn’t make any sense.

He still had it – in a box with a bunch of your other shit he never had the heart to incinerate. One photo of you, an old movie projector, a weird rectangular flashlight that never worked, a notebook with scribbles that looked like hieroglyphs and diagrams, that t-shirt, and those black basketball shoes you’d loved so much and worn like armor.

Granted, you’d been onto something there. He’d seen more people running around with them on the street in recent years, especially fucking hippies.

God, you would’ve loved the sixties. If you’d been here, he probably wouldn’t have dared to break up a single protest because you would’ve been in the middle of them all – most likely throwing shit at his head while spouting profanities.

“Led Zeppelin,” Ben repeated quietly, almost to himself.

“Right,” Legend said, tilting his head with an eye roll he held back. “We’re pushing their album next week. Big concert in New York, first tour, they’re opening for Vanilla Fudge and Iron Butterfly, but they’re blowing up fast. And we need you there, Ben. It’s great for Soldier Boy’s image.”

The words had been stuck in his mind for years, a constant reminder of that January day in 1942 when you’d run into him on the street, looking scared and frantic like you were running from something – or someone.

He remembered it like it was yesterday.

He had been walking down Market Street, barely paying attention, when he felt something collide with his chest. A jolt. A bump. He’d glanced down just in time to see you, disoriented and shaken, like you’d just appeared out of thin air.

You’d never told him where you were from. Not exactly. You’d said things that didn’t make sense, little pieces of conversation that he could never fully fit together. And he’d let it slide, because he was too busy fucking falling for you.

How could you have already known about them more than twenty-five years ago? About the band, the music, the name? It didn’t make fucking sense.

You’d always talked about wanting to go to New York. You’d mentioned it at the very start, almost like you were trying to find your way back to it. He’d assumed you were from there.

“You said New York? Led Zeppelin?” Ben checked, looking at Legend now.

The man exhaled a deep sigh. “Yes, that’s what I said. Jesus fuck, lay off the coke at least every once in a while. I need you focused for this. Are you in or not? It’s all set up.”

“I’ll do it,” Ben found himself saying, his thoughts still reeling.

He didn’t even fully know why he agreed to it. Maybe it was fucking instinct, maybe it was curiosity. Maybe, just maybe, it was a goddamn chance to get closer to the answers he’d been searching for.

Legend moved on to the next thing on his agenda, but Ben didn’t. He chased the cocaine and waited for you to show up again.

The walls shook.

Not from artillery or air raids this time, but from the screech of Jimmy Page’s guitar splitting the air like lightning. The crowd at the Fillmore East was a fucking storm – writhing, screaming, soaked in sound and sweat and weed under psychedelic light shows. A perfect American chaos.

Ben leaned against the wall backstage, arms crossed, cigarette forgotten between his fingers, dead behind the green eyes. He wasn’t really listening. Not to the music or the screaming or even Legend rambling to a couple of press leeches about “soldier-turned-superstar synergy” behind him.

His mind was fucking somewhere else – always.

Until he saw you.

Not a hallucination – the real you. And he locked onto you like a sniper on a fucking target.

Close to the front row, chatting and laughing with another couple of college-aged kids, sharing a blunt of all things. You wore bell-bottom jeans, a tie-dye shirt, and a military jacket. Your hair was longer and wavier, a flower crown gracing your head like a halo. And you were barefoot – of course you fucking were.

To be fair, so were most of the counterculture idiots here.

You looked different. Younger. But still fucking beautiful. Still you.

Were you fucking aging in reverse?

But in your hand? That fucking shirt. The same one the crew backstage was wearing. He’d asked about it earlier when he saw it – limited supply, roadies and band only. They wouldn’t even give him one, and it took some goddamn guts to say no to him.

How the hell had you–

More importantly, it couldn’t be the fucking same one he held hostage in a box. He’d just looked at it today. Still fucking there.

And then, Ben stopped fucking thinking and moved.

Down the narrow stairs. Pushing past people. Ignoring some wide-eyed girl asking for an autograph and ignoring his manager’s shouting. Ben ducked into the crowd, green eyes fixed on you as you disappeared through a side corridor near the green room exit as the band finished their last song.

“Hey!” he called out, voice swallowed by the music and people. He called your name, shouted it, but nothing.

You didn’t stop. You didn’t turn. You weren’t hurrying. You weren’t hiding. You were fucking skipping – hair swinging, laughing like the world hadn’t broken you yet.

The hallway was dim, echoing with the muffled rumble of the encore behind him. You were just ahead, walking with that signature bounce in your step, still high from the concert and giggling to yourself.

He had almost caught up with you when he heard your voice, clear as a bell:

“Best fucking twenty-fifth birthday ever!”

You threw your arms up like you meant it, spun once, and then–

Gone.

No door. No exit. No trapdoor, no trick. One blink, and you were smoke. Vapor. Air. Poof.

Ben stopped dead in his tracks.

He stepped forward slowly, staring at the empty space where you’d just been. Where your voice had rung out like a bullet. His fingers grazed the air like he could feel the static of you still hanging there. He could even still smell the faint hint of perfume and something that was just you.

For the first time since 1944, he wasn’t hallucinating.

You’d been fucking real.

Real enough to chase. Real enough to call out to. Real enough to leave him with goosebumps crawling up his arms.

And you’d vanished like you’d never been there at all.

1983

Fourteen years of this fucking bullshit.

That’s how long he’d been dragging Payback’s corpse around – smiling beside freaks and burnouts, posing for cameras and fronting public service campaigns with assholes who’d never seen a day of combat but still called themselves fucking heroes.

Fourteen goddamn years of being Vought’s poster boy with a pack of boot-licking weirdos trailing behind him like a fucking fart.

They called it “America’s second line of defense.” Ben called it what it was: a corporate fucking leash.

Payback was never his idea. That was The Legend’s fucking brainchild – sold to him in ‘69 as a PR stunt, a temporary gig, just until the war cooled off and the headlines moved on. But the war never cooled off, and the headlines only got hungrier.

So the team stuck.

And then Stan Edgar fucking showed up.

Colder. Smarter. American-made. Less obsessed with genetics, more obsessed with markets. He didn’t give speeches about legacy or fucking manifestos about the Master Race. Stan just wanted numbers. Ratings. Brand loyalty.

He made the Vought machine quieter, cleaner, meaner. He didn’t care about heroes – he cared about fucking products.

And he was the one who made Payback fucking permanent – more merch to sell.

Ben was never asked what he thought. Not really. He just kept showing up when they told him to, kept signing autographs and taping PSAs and standing shoulder-to-shoulder with people who made his goddamn skin crawl.

Gunpowder was a paranoid, psychotic little shit who kept muttering about the Constitution while sniffing glue.

Swatto had the IQ of a fucking fruit fly.

Mindstorm twitched when anyone got too close, like a goddamn Chihuahua in a hurricane.

The TNT Twins only spoke in matching rhymes now, some fucking weird twin-bond thing Vought was pushing for interviews.

Black Noir, though?

That one was different. That prick thought he was fucking funny.

Always cracking one-liners on live TV, writing his own bits into interviews, trying to fucking outshine him during group appearances. He never fucking shut up – he actually reminded Ben a lot of you in that way, which only made him hate the guy even more.

But Vought loved him – “mysterious, edgy, marketable.”

But Ben didn’t do fucking comedy. He did wars. Scandals. Legacy.

And then, there was still Crimson Countess.

Every red carpet they walked, she clung to his arm like a damn leech, blowing kisses and whispering in that fake breathy voice about their “perfect chemistry.” America fucking ate it up.

Behind the curtains, she was insufferable. A diva with a superiority complex and a perfume that could kill a fucking rhino. She flirted when she was bored, picked fights when she was high, and only let him fuck her when she wanted him to do something.

Like now.

Tonight’s “team initiative” was a glitzy, pastel-colored Vought Foundation charity gala for the Children of Tomorrow, where kids ran around in neon pink, Vought-branded sashes, pop singers on stage tried to make capitalism look cute, and the whole ballroom stank of corporate virtue.

It was his goddamn nightmare, and somewhere between the branded cupcakes and the flashing cameras, Ben was thinking about how easy it’d be to light the fucking place on fire.

All he’d been looking for was a distraction to slip away from the circus for a minute.

And Countess was there, winked over her shoulder with a smirk, and gestured for him to follow her into an executive bathroom to let him rail her over the sink because she wanted him to do a couple-branded Christmas special with matching pajamas and talk about Payback-themed wedding merch.

Fucking kill him now.

Christ, the thought of marrying that bitch made him want to peel his own skin off and pour acid over it. But Vought had been putting more pressure on him recently to put a ring on it, because apparently, you can’t date someone for a decade without making it a prison life sentence.

All the suits, Edgar, and Legend thought pushing the whole goddamn nuclear family thing would make him look “cleaner” – like the fucking Reagans. But Ben had no fucking plans of doing that.

Because he had already said those words to someone else and was still waiting for a goddamn answer forty-one fucking years later.

He still didn’t know who or what you were, but he knew you were out there, and that was enough to make him cling to that little flicker of hope that he’d find you again and finally leave this hellhole behind – probably in flames that reached high into the sky and burned fucking God himself.

Truthfully, he’d tried. He’d fucking tried with so many goddamn women that they all just blurred into a vague number in his head. He’d tried to replace you with their bodies, their fake smiles, and their hands running through his hair.

But it never goddamn worked. You were the only one who ever mattered. The only one who’d been real. You had been the one to see him, stand by him, and love him for who he was – or who he had been.

Fuck, he hated this life. He’d built this whole fucking empire on lies, on pretending, on doing the same fucking PR stunts over and over until it all blended together into one big blur of emptiness.

And now? Now he was lost in this broken shell of a man who was just trying to numb the pain with meaningless sex, drugs, and alcohol.

“Jesus, Ben, did you fucking lube up with sandpaper today?” Countess bitched and moaned under him, bent over the fucking sink as he slammed his hips into her with barely any enthusiasm.

“Yeah, well, if you’d shut up for a fucking minute and let me do coke off your ass, maybe I could’ve pretended you’re someone else and gotten in the fucking mood,” he huffed and drove into her harder, making her grunt as her body jolted harshly against the sink.

It was just like always. He didn’t care about her. He didn’t care about anyone anymore.

“Please, you haven’t made a woman come since the Nixon administration,” she hissed, bracing herself against the counter.

“Oh, I have. Just not you.” He sneered and met her glare in the mirror.

“God, you’re in a mood today,” she groaned and rolled her eyes. “Really making a girl feel special.”

Ben snorted cruelly. “You think I really give a shit?”

“Could at least pretend I matter instead of being an asshole about it,” she huffed.

He shoved her against the sink again, harder than before, making her gasp. The sound of his skin meeting hers echoed off the bathroom walls. She let out a small moan, one of those fake ones, but it didn’t fucking matter.

Nothing ever did.

“Don’t flatter yourself, doll. You’re not that good of a fucking actress,” he retorted. His thrusts didn’t slow, just got rougher. She winced, but didn’t tell him to stop. She never did. “You moan like it’s a fucking PSA.”

Her skin reeked of glitter body spray, cheap perfume, and desperation. There was nothing underneath the red suit – no substance, no soul. Just marketing.

He leaned in, mouth by her ear. “You wish I gave a shit about you. You wish I fucking felt something when I’m inside you.”

Her shoulders flinched. Bingo.

He used to pretend it was all part of the gig. The PR, the violence, the meaningless sex. But after all these years, he couldn’t even fake the illusion anymore. He was rotten clear through, and she was just another cheap lay helping him forget.

He didn’t care about the gala. He didn’t care about Payback. He didn’t care about her. All he cared about was the high that would come after this and the voice he might hear once he was there.

“You’re such a dick, you know that?” she gritted through her teeth.

He smirked coolly. “That’s the part you’re on, doll.”

Ben bit down on his lip, pushing into her with all the anger, the bitterness, the soul-crushing loneliness that had been suffocating him for decades. He didn’t love her. He never would. She was just the next in line of a long string of women who thought they could fucking replace you.

But they never could, could they?

He could feel Countess trembling a little, not from pleasure but from the reminder of what he was. Who he was. Soldier Boy. Living legend. America’s goddamn shield. And a fucking monster that should be feared behind closed doors.

Applause roared outside through the ballroom and drowned into the bathroom. Ben heard the emcee’s voice, amplified through the speakers:

“–please welcome the incredible Cyndi Lauper!”

He barely registered it at first. But then the synthesized music kicked in – soft, haunting, indisputable.

“Lying in my bed, I hear the clock tick and think of you…”

Everything fucking stopped.

His hips. His thoughts. His fucking breath.

Countess huffed beneath him, annoyed. “Oh what now?”

He didn’t reply. His pulse jumped. His body stiffened as his mind reeled.

No fucking way…

But it was the unmistakable melody of a song he hadn’t thought about in years. Your voice echoed in the back of his skull, singing that same song at a piano for him in that empty, lonely mansion back in ‘42 with a smile he couldn’t get out of his goddamn head. You always played it like the world could just fade away and it was just the two of you in that moment.

He shoved Countess off him like she was a fucking mosquito. Her heel skidded against the floor as she yelped, indignant.

She caught herself on the edge of the sink with a startled grunt. “You serious?” she snapped, breathless and pissed. “You’re just gonna stop mid-fuck?”

But he was already zipping up, dick still half-hard, mind racing. He didn’t even look at her as he slammed the bathroom door open so hard it cracked against the wall.

“What the hell is wrong with you lately?” Countess barked after him. “You’re worse than usual.”

Ben, however, was already out the door and stormed down the hallway, scanning the crowd like a man possessed. The name burned like a neon sign inside his mind. Cyndi Lauper. Those lyrics. That melody.

He’d asked you once where the song came from. You’d smiled and said you’d heard it from some no-name bar singer in your hometown.

Fucking liar.

And then there she was – the girl that went by Cyndi Lauper. Blonde. Young. Soft voice. Drenched in sequins and pop energy, bouncing onstage with a grin and a mic.

But not you. It was a fucking paradox.

His chest squeezed like a fist had wrapped around his heart and pulled. For a long while, he couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. He didn’t blink the whole time she performed – hypnotized. The lights, the noise, the crowd – it all faded into fucking static.

After the set, Ben pushed past crew members and camera guys, ignoring them all, and stormed into her dressing room. Didn’t even fucking knock.

The girl startled and spun around on her chair in front of the vanity when the door burst open. “Whoa! Shit, man! You can’t just barge in here!”

Ben stopped in the doorway and stared at her. Really stared. Head titled, eyes squinted – searching.

Cyndi mirrored his expression. “Wait… Aren’t you–”

“Yeah, yeah,” he huffed dismissively and stepped forward, gently shutting the door behind him as not to spook her more. “Where did you hear that song? The time one.”

“Excuse me?” She blinked and looked slightly scared.

“Just answer the fucking question,” he demanded, towering over her.

Cyndi swallowed. “I-… I wrote it. Co-wrote it with Rob Hyman.”

“Bullshit.”

“No, it’s true,” she insisted and wasn’t lying. He could see it in her eyes – blank confusion. “I wrote it a couple months ago.”

“Months?!”

She jumped in her seat when his voice accidentally got louder.

Ben cleared his throat, softened a bit. Then he asked her if she’d ever known someone by your name. She hadn’t.

“You sure?” he still checked. “Pretty. Smart mouth. Pain in the ass but played piano like a goddamn angel. Could light up a whole room when she wasn’t pissing you off.”

The girl shook her head warily. “I don’t–… I really don’t think so?”

His green eyes narrowed. “You ever met anyone who said they were you?”

“I am me.”

“Yeah, no shit.” He scoffed exhaustively and rolled his eyes back, running a hand through his hair.

“Are you like… okay? Are you high, dude?”

Fucking Christ, why did people keep asking him that? He wasn’t fucking crazy, but every muscle in his body buzzed with confusion. Frustration. And sure, it could easily be mistaken for the kind that edged toward madness.

Ben then turned and left the dressing room without another word, slamming the door behind him. He stomped down the backstage hallway past partygoers and handlers toward a backdoor alley, shaking his head the whole way there till his face was hit with the sting of the cool night air and the smell of weed and exhaust.

He lit a joint with shaking fingers, sucked in smoke like it might fill the hole that just cracked wider in his chest. He leaned against the side of the building, staring up at the night sky.

Ben had seen hundreds of supes over the years. He’d watched their little powers manifest and burn out, sometimes in fire, sometimes in tears. He’d seen enough weird shit to know the signs.

Your strength, the healing, the goddamn attitude… But it was more than that, wasn’t it?

The shirt. The shoes. The song.

As he glanced up, you were there right in front of him again – that same damn hallucination of you but never the fucking real thing.

“Fuck me,” he muttered under his breath, exhaling smoke through his nose, eyes fixed on your ghost. “You’re a goddamn time traveler, aren’t you?”

Your lips rose to a smirk like he’d just won a damn prize. “Getting hotter.”

It all made fucking sense now. The way you looked at him like you already knew him. The way you touched him like it mattered. Finite – like it would fucking end.

You fucking lied to him. Played him. Abandoned him.

And God, he wanted to fucking kill you for it.

He laughed, bitter and broken. The joint trembled between his fingers. Had he just been a goddamn fluke for you? Someone you’d visited for fun and ticked off a fucking checklist like Zeppelin and Lauper?

“You ever actually fucking loved me?” he asked out loud and watched your features soften, stepping closer.

“You know I did.”

He bit down on his lips to stop them from quivering. “Then why the fuck did you never come back, huh?”

Your lips tentatively brushed his cheek and left a kiss there, and he swore to God and the fucking devil that it felt goddamn real.

“It’s not that simple,” was all you said before fading away again.

Ben rubbed a hand over his face and exhaled a shaky breath. All this time, he thought he’d lost you. Now he wasn’t so sure you were ever his to keep.

But maybe it really wasn’t as simple as you lying and leaving without a care in the world. Maybe you didn’t have a fucking choice.

Either way, it didn’t really matter anymore because Ben was going to look for you and fucking find you – time after time.

Ben hadn’t slept in fucking weeks.

Not really, at least. He’d managed a couple hours here and there, passed out in the back of a limousine with glitter on his chest or face-down in the suede-lined bench of his private booth at Studio 54 with some wannabe starlet half-crushed under him. He was running on fumes and rage and whatever white lines they kept putting in front of him.

And it still wasn’t fucking enough because you were goddamn nowhere.

No paper trail. No aliases. No birth certificates. No marriage or driver’s licenses. No public records. Not even a whisper. And no one at Vought seemed to know or even remember you either when he’d quietly asked around.

Not PR. Not security. Not operations. When he’d barked your name at one of the suits during a marketing shoot, they’d just blinked at him like he’d said fucking Bigfoot. Ben had shoved the guy into a wall so hard after, his goddamn head bounced.

Payback was fucking tiptoeing around him too, even Gunpowder. Countess flinched every time she passed him in a hallway.

Good. Let ‘em be fucking scared. Let ‘em all burn if it brought him closer to you.

Which was why Ben ended up here – in this oversized glass coffin of an office, with the man he hated more than anyone in the goddamn world.

Stan Edgar sat behind his sleek, fingerprintless desk, cool and composed in his gray suit, hands folded, like he was interviewing a politician – not entertaining the half-coked-out national icon that had just kicked in his door.

“You wanted to see me?” Edgar’s voice was too smooth, too casual. He never took anyone’s anger seriously. Not Soldier Boy’s, anyway.

Ben plopped down in the chair in front of him, cool and smug as ever. He knew he couldn’t trust Edgar, but he had a fucking plan. He was going to be goddamn smart about this.

“I need a new recruit,” Ben began, his voice hard and cutting through the silence like a blade. “Countess is a fuckin’ liability. I’m done with her. Get me someone who actually knows how to fight.”

Stan’s eyes lifted slowly, meeting Soldier Boy’s gaze, calm and calculating. He folded the file in front of him with a soft click. “A replacement? I thought she was... satisfactory for your team. She’s a founding member of Payback.”

“Satisfactory is a nice word for fucking ‘useless,’” Ben spat with all the bravado he could muster. Good thing he was an excellent actor. Edgar would never be the fucking wiser. “She’s fuckin’ slow. Unreliable. Can’t follow orders, goes off-script, too busy fuckin’ singing to blow anything up. I need someone with real fuckin’ power. Someone who can stand up when it goddamn matters.”

Edgar nodded slowly, as though he was considering the request, fingers drumming on the desk. “I see. Well, I’ll be blunt – those kinds of supes are… difficult to come by. What kind of powers are you looking for, exactly? Something specific?”

Ben shifted in his seat, green eyes narrowing slightly. He chose his next words carefully, deliberately casual, as if the request were no different from any other mission. “I’ve heard of a supe with... unique abilities. Something like time manipulation. Time travel, maybe. Can you fucking get me someone like that?”

Edgar’s brow quirked, but his voice remained as cool as ever. “Time travel? You mean chronokinesis?”

Ben rolled his eyes with a huff. “Sure, whatever.”

Edgar hummed, a faint smile playing on his lips. “Well, that’s quite the claim, Soldier Boy. A supe with those abilities would be, well, hard to find, even for someone like me.”

“Well, I’ve got certain information someone like that exists. A woman. Off the grid,” Ben revealed, still carefully casual, leaning back in his chair.

Edgar’s expression didn’t change, but the subtle twitch in his eyebrow betrayed his interest. “And how exactly do you know about someone like her?”

Ben pursed his lips, meeting his gaze. “I’ve heard things. Not important how. What’s important is that you find her for me. Imagine the possibilities. Pretty powerful, right? Could be useful. You could get some real fuckin’ work done with someone like that.”

Edgar leaned back slightly in his chair, eyeing Soldier Boy closely with an amused smile. “Useful, yes. But also incredibly dangerous, wouldn’t you say? A supe who can manipulate time could potentially cause serious damage. Chronokinetics can be unpredictable. Unstable. A wildcard, if you will.”

Ben scoffed, not backing down. “I’ve handled worse. Don’t worry about it. I’ll keep her in fucking line.”

Edgar gave a placating smile. “I’m sure you will.”

Ben sighed in annoyance, running a hand through his hair. “Can you fucking find her or not? You’re fucking Vought, right? You’ve got all the records, all the data. If there’s someone like that out there, you should know about it.”

Edgar nodded slowly, tapping his fingers lightly on the paperwork in front of him. “I’m afraid I’ve never heard of a supe with powers like that. And I do hear about everyone. Trust me. She wouldn’t have just slipped through the cracks. It’s a rare, valuable ability. Vought would’ve already had their eyes on her.”

Ben’s lips curled into a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Well, you might have missed her. Doesn’t mean she’s not out there. You’ve got your hands full with a lot of supes, right?”

Edgar’s gaze remained unwavering. “Yes, but I can assure you we don’t exactly have a file on someone like that.”

“Then fuckin’ make one,” Ben snapped impatiently. He wasn’t going to give Edgar too much, but there was something in his voice that betrayed just how badly he needed this. Needed you. “Just find her. I don’t care what it fuckin’ takes or how much it’ll cost.”

Edgar’s eyes flickered for a moment before he carefully pressed on, his voice deceptively light. “I don’t think you understand the broader implications here, Soldier Boy. Chronokinetics are… tricky. They don’t exactly leave easy-to-follow trails. They don’t follow normal rules. You’re assuming she’s current.”

Ben’s jaw twitched. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well,” Edgar began, his tone mild, “if we’re speaking about time manipulation, someone like that wouldn’t need to exist now. She could be born thirty years from now and still show up tomorrow.”

Shit.

Ben swallowed subtly. He hadn’t even thought of that. Were you not even fucking alive right now? Had you not even been born yet?

Jesus fucking Christ, he couldn’t wait that long – however long that might even be. What if you were still in fucking diapers right now? What the fuck was he supposed to do with that?

“Still,” the executive added smoothly, “I can look into it. Quietly. But I’ll need more than just a vague power set. Where was she spotted? Do you have a name?”

Soldier Boy smirked coolly. “You think I’m gonna hand that fucking over just like that?”

Edgar gave a soft chuckle. “Of course not. But a trail helps the hunt.”

Ben’s patience was wearing thin, but he couldn’t afford to snap. Not now. Not when he was this close to finding you.

He let out a frustrated sigh, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a small photograph – the only one he had of you. He slid it across the desk without saying a word.

Edgar’s eyes flicked to the photo, then back up to Soldier Boy. The quiet intensity in the room shifted, but Stan kept his expression neutral as he picked up the photograph. It showed a young woman. Smiling, eyes bright and warm – an image of someone you’d hold dear.

He set the photo down, but his fingers lingered on the edge for just a moment too long. He was already filing the details away, cataloging the pieces of Soldier Boy’s unraveling obsession.

“This is her?” Edgar asked, his voice still smooth but now laced with subtle curiosity.

Ben’s face was hard, but he ignored the churning warning in his gut. “Yeah, that’s her. She’s the one I’m looking for. You think you can find her?”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Edgar replied, Soldier Boy’s obvious desperation not fazing him at all. “You have a name as well?”

Ben ground his jaw, teeth gritting. His hands gripped the armrests of his chair so tightly he almost broke it into pieces. The warning in his stomach only grew louder, screaming, but he was fucking desperate.

And so, Ben revealed the biggest secret you’d ever entrusted him with – your fucking name.

As soon as it left his mouth, he fucking knew it was a mistake – one he couldn’t possibly take back. You’d whispered it to him like a secret back then, one he’d sworn to protect and keep.

But feeding you to the fucking sharks wasn’t protecting you now, was it?

However, if Edgar was successful in his search and finally brought you back to Ben, he swore he’d keep you fucking safe from the vultures. No one would fucking dare to touch you as long as he was around.

“I’ll get started on this. Have our people look into it,” Edgar promised, leaning back in his chair again, folding his hands in front of him. “But let me remind you – power like that comes at a price. And even you can’t control everything. The consequences of such a supe could potentially be catastrophic. Reality-altering. Our enemies would weaponize it. Our allies would betray us for it.”

The edge in Ben’s voice sharpened. “I don’t care. I’m not asking for your goddamn advice. I want her. I’ll fucking deal with the rest.”

Ben didn’t show that the thought worried him. But deep down, he finally understood why you fucking lied – why you probably ran and had been running for a long time.

“As you wish, Soldier Boy,” Edgar said in that placating tone of his again. “But in the meantime, I think it’s best if you concentrate on your… image.”

Ben snorted in amusement. “Image? You think I give a shit about that right now?”

“You should,” Stan insisted. “You’ve been spiraling. The collateral damage. The outcry from the public about your actions. Your team can barely work with you. The number of complaints I’ve received from Crimson Countess alone could fill a filing cabinet.”

“She’s a bitch,” Ben scoffed with a shrug. “Hence the replacement.”

“She’s afraid,” Stan corrected. “And she’s not alone.”

“Good,” Ben said, sneering. “Fear keeps people in line.”

Edgar didn’t respond immediately. He was letting the silence stretch out, as if weighing Soldier Boy’s words carefully. “I’ll get you what you want. But for now, you need to keep it together. If this goes too far, if you push too hard, I’ll have no choice but to consider more... permanent measures.”

Ben huffed a laugh, amused. Cocky. “You’re fucking underestimating me, Edgar,” he said through gritted teeth, fed up with the bullshit. “I’m not playing by your fucking rules anymore. You think you’re the one in control? Well, you’re not. I’m in fucking control now. And I’ll burn it all down if I have to.”

He rose from his seat with a grunt and strolled to the door, sending one last threatening glare over his shoulder. “I’m not fucking around, Stan. Find her. Or I swear to God it won’t be just Crimson Countess who’s fuckin’ replaced.”

Edgar didn’t flinch. “I’ll take care of it.”

When the door finally slammed shut behind Soldier Boy, with a force so hard one of the wall sconces tilted, Stand Edgar simply sat at his desk, hands neatly folded, and stared at the photograph still in front of him.

No last name. No date of birth. No dossier. That already told Stan everything. If this woman really existed in this world, she’d be on record. Vought’s files were vast, its archives deeper than the Pentagon’s, and he’d never once seen a file go missing without cause.

Which meant she hadn’t been born yet. Not in this time. Not in any time Stan Edgar had mapped.

His eyes lingered on the image, committing your face to memory. There was nothing extraordinary about you at first glance – no glowing eyes, no suit, no telltale sign of power.

But Stan had learned long ago: the most dangerous ones didn’t always look the part.

He sighed faintly. Complaints. Injuries. Public backlash. Payback was a PR nightmare already. Soldier Boy was even worse.

The supe was unraveling. The signs were subtle, but they were there: paranoia, fixation, long silences followed by irrational violence. The man had always been volatile. But this? This was personal. That made him unpredictable.

And an unpredictable asset was a dangerous one.

Edgar picked up the phone and dialed. No notes. No names. He didn’t need them.

“Begin prepping the contingency plan. We need to accelerate our timeline,” he said evenly. “Yes. Nicaragua. Make sure our Russian contacts are ready.” He paused for a moment, eyes landing back on the photo. “And I have a name and a face for you to put on our watch list. Might be years before she shows up, but I think it’s worth our attention.”

Stan hung up. He threw one last glance at the photograph, and then it disappeared into a locked drawer. Out of sight but never out of mind.

He then leaned back in his chair, satisfied. Soldier Boy could chase ghosts all he wanted – but Vought would make sure it was the last time he ran off-leash.

▶️ Chapter 13: It's Alive! It's Alive!

Oh, you guys, please let me know what you thought of this one! I tried to weave so many time loop puzzle pieces together here and I hope I pulled it all off somewhat believably 🤓 This was so much fun to figure out, though! You probably guessed that reader was a bit responsible for Soldier Boy's descend into madness (and yes, I did imply that HL's little mirror hallucinations might be a genetic thing from the OG Compound V strain passed down from his father 😝), but did you guys see the plot twist with Edgar coming? 👀

Next part we're not fully going back to the present, but at least 2022 and the events of season 3 – the full reader insert version. I tried to keep the overlap at a minimum, though, and wanted to give you guys more "bonus scenes" if you will – aka Ben reacting to reader, figuring out the loop, and what really was going on in that big mellon of his. See ya next week 😉

Coming Up:

“What about her?” Ben gestured with his chin toward you once the asshole had finished his pitch. “Who’s she?”

“She’s one of you. Supe. Chronokinetic,” the guy told him and smirked. “Bit of a wildcard, but bloody handy in a pinch.”

So Ben had been right. He was almost proud of himself for solving that one.

But what the fuck were you doing here? Why were you so fucking calm around men with guns? This shouldn’t be your fucking life.

“Oi, sunshine. C’mere. Introduce yourself,” the Brit called you over.

You stood slowly and dusted off your jean shorts, muscles tense as Ben’s eyes pinned you in place like a knife through a photograph. You weren’t wearing a band shirt, a ‘40s dress, or even an overall this time. Just a plain black hoodie with white lettering that read: ‘Without geometry, life is pointless.’

Yeah, definitely you.

“What’s your name, sweetheart?” Ben asked, a charming but feigned smirk tugging at his lips, eyes squinting and grazing over you. Observing. Studying.

Still not a trace of recognition in your eyes.

Did you really not know him? Were you lying again? Might as well give it a shot and see what poured out.

And then you just gave him your name. No muss, no fuss, no lies. Like it wasn’t a big deal to begin with. You weren’t guarding it like a state secret or nuclear codes. Just your name, plain and simple.

“You know who I am?” Ben asked next and watched your face contort – brow knitted, nose scrunched, lips pursed. You thought he was fucking crazy – but definitely not someone you once shared a goddamn bed with.

“I mean, yeah,” you said and snorted an amused laugh. “You’re Soldier Boy. You were in my high school history books. My grandpa liked to talk about you when I was a kid.“

Ben bit his lips, hummed. Nodded. And he wasn’t sure yet what, but something had died inside of him.

The fuck–

What the hell was he supposed to do with that?

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