Will-o'-the-wisp

『••✎••』

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.