Chapter Text
Rain tapped weakly against the apartment window. Not enough to sound comforting. Just enough to make the city feel grey.
Hughie Campbell stood in front of the bathroom mirror brushing her teeth while staring at herself with the vague dissociation of someone already exhausted before 8 a.m. Her phone buzzed on the sink.
DAD: Don’t forget dinner Thursday. I’m making lasagna. Real lasagna. Not frozen.
A second message arrived immediately after.
DAD: …mostly real.
Despite herself, Hughie smiled a little. She typed back around the toothbrush.
HUGHIE: That’s somehow more concerning
Another buzz.
DAD: Love you, kiddo.
The smile faded more softly this time.
HUGHIE: Love you too
She set the phone down. For a second, the lockscreen lit the bathroom dimly. A picture of her and Robin at Coney Island. Robin mid-laugh. Hughie squinting because the sun had been in her eyes. Happy. Hughie stared at it too long. Then turned the phone face down.
The electronics store smelled faintly like overheated plastic and stale coffee. A customer slammed a receipt onto the counter. “This says online the headphones are thirty-nine ninety-nine.”
Hughie checked the barcode again, even though she already knew the answer. “Right, yeah, that price is for members.”
“Well, nobody told me that.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You people always say that like it fixes anything.”
“I know.” The customer blinked, slightly thrown off by how sincere she sounded. Hughie offered a weak apologetic smile anyway.
By the time the man finally stormed off muttering under his breath, her coworker leaned sideways from the next register. “You know you don’t actually have to apologise when customers are being assholes, right?”
Hughie shrugged. “Seems to calm them down faster.”
“Yeah, because you apologise like a hostage video.” That got a reluctant snort out of her. Her coworker grinned triumphantly before nodding toward her phone. “You gonna text your ex back or just stare at the notifications forever?”
Hughie looked down instinctively. Three unread messages from Robin sat at the top of the screen.
ROBIN: Found your Cure shirt btw
ROBIN: Still smells like your awful detergent
ROBIN: You want it back or can I finally burn it?
Hughie smiled despite herself. Then the smile faded just as quickly. “Maybe later.”
Her coworker watched her carefully for a moment. “You guys really done?”
The question landed heavier than it should have. Hughie busied herself reorganising receipts that didn’t need reorganising. “Yeah,” she said quietly. “I think so.”
—
The breakup had been six months ago. No cheating. No screaming. No dramatic betrayal. Almost worse because of it. Just slow erosion. Robin wanted movement. Plans. Risk. Hughie wanted stability so badly it bordered on panic.
Eventually, Robin had looked at her across their tiny apartment and said. “I feel like you’re waiting for your life to start.” And Hughie hadn’t known how to answer that. Because she’d secretly feared the same thing for years.
—
Lunch break. Hughie sat alone outside the store scrolling absently through social media while traffic crawled past in wet grey streaks. A video autoplayed. Homelander smiling for the cameras. A-Train racing through downtown. God, people loved supes. Not just admired them. Loved them. Like religion with sponsorship deals.
Hughie kept scrolling. Vacation photos. Engagement announcements. A pregnancy reveal. Everybody seemed to be becoming something. Moving forward. Meanwhile, her life felt paused halfway through a sentence.
Her phone buzzed again. Robin. This time, Hughie answered. “Hey.”
Robin sounded winded immediately. Like she’d been walking fast. “Okay, serious question.”
“Uh oh.”
“I found your old PlayStation under my couch.”
“Oh, my God.”
“You said that like you forgot it existed.”
“I honestly kind of did.”
Robin laughed softly. And just hearing it made something ache unexpectedly in Hughie’s chest. There was a pause after the laughter faded. Not awkward exactly. Just familiar.
Robin spoke first. “You okay?”
The question was gentle enough to be dangerous. Hughie watched traffic move through the intersection ahead. Yellow cabs. Cyclists. People with umbrellas are weaving between puddles.
“Yeah,” she lied automatically.
Robin hummed softly like she knew. “You still apologising to customers for existing?”
“Only the mean ones.”
“That’s growth.”
Hughie smiled faintly. For one dangerous second, she almost asked: Do you think we made a mistake? But fear closed around the words before they could leave her mouth. That was always the problem.
Robin started saying something else, and Hughie stepped off the curb without looking up. A blur of blue streaked toward her from the corner of the street. Then—
Impact.
Robin never finished her sentence. The world detonated sideways. There was no time to process what she was seeing—just a flash of blue, a pressure against her left leg, and a sound like a truck hitting reinforced steel.
CRACK.
The noise ripped through the intersection so violently that nearby car alarms erupted instantly afterwards. Hughie’s phone flew from her hand. Coffee exploded upward in a spray of brown and white. For one impossible second, everything slowed. A blur of flesh and blue fabric spun away from her down the street.
Then sound rushed back all at once. Screaming. Brakes. Someone yelling, “Holy shit!”
Robin’s voice crackled faintly through the fallen phone speaker somewhere near Hughie’s feet. “Hughie? Hughie?!”
Hughie blinked. She was still standing. Rainwater slid down the sleeve of her jacket. Her heartbeat hammered unevenly—not from pain. Shock. Pure shock. She looked down slowly. Her sneaker had twisted sideways unnaturally, rubber shredded near the toe, where something had impacted it hard enough to tear the sole apart.
Her ankle inside it looked untouched. Not bruised. Not bleeding. Not even red.
A smear of blood stretched across the asphalt ahead of her. People were backing away from it in horror. At the end of the trail, A-Train crashed through the side mirror of a parked car hard enough to cave the door inward before finally collapsing against the pavement.
His scream echoed between the buildings. Not heroic. Animal. Raw panic and pain. “My FUCKING leg!”
Hughie stared. The angle of his leg made her stomach lurch instantly. Bone pushed visibly beneath the fabric of his suit near the knee. Half the skin along one side of his body had been scraped away from tumbling across the asphalt at superhuman speed. Steam rose faintly from the road around him.
A-Train looked up. Their eyes met across the intersection. And Hughie watched confusion spread across his face first. Then disbelief. Then fear. “What the fuck…” he rasped. His gaze dropped to her foot. Then back to her face. “What the fuck IS she?!”
Every person nearby turned toward Hughie simultaneously. The attention hit harder than the collision. “No,” Hughie said instantly, shaking her head. “No, I—” Her voice broke. “I didn’t do anything.”
Someone nearby whispered, “She stopped him.” Stopped him. Like she’d done it on purpose.
Robin was still yelling faintly through the phone speaker. “Hughie! Answer me!”
Hughie bent automatically to grab it. The cracked screen reflected her face at her strangely. No cuts. No blood. No injuries. Nothing. Her breathing started speeding up. This wasn’t possible.
A-Train tried forcing himself upright. The second he put weight on his broken leg, it folded with a wet crunch. He screamed again, punching the pavement hard enough to crack it.
People flinched backwards. Hughie did too. Not because she thought he’d hit her. Because suddenly she realised she wasn’t afraid he could. That thought hit her so hard she nearly dropped the phone again.
Sirens wailed in the distance. Fast. Too fast.
Black SUVs rounded the corner so aggressively that one nearly mounted the sidewalk entirely. Doors flew open before the vehicles fully stopped moving. Men in black tactical armour flooded the intersection immediately. Not NYPD.
Vought.
The crowd quieted almost instinctively at the sight of them. A blonde woman in heels pushed through the security detail, clutching a tablet against her chest with white knuckles. Ashley Barrett. Even from television, she looked stressed. In person, she looked one inconvenience away from cardiac arrest.
Ashley barely glanced at A-Train before locking onto Hughie completely. And freezing. For one split second, Hughie saw genuine fear flicker across her face. Not concern. Fear.
A-Train pointed at Hughie shakily from the ground. “Check her,” he hissed.
Ashley frowned. “What?”
“She should be dead.” Silence spread outward through the crowd.
Ashley approached slowly now, eyes moving over Hughie with clinical intensity. “Honey,” she said carefully, “have you done something like this before?”
Hughie stared at her blankly. “What?”
“Answer the question.”
“I don’t know.” Ashley’s jaw tightened.
Behind her, one of the Vought security men murmured into his earpiece: “Possible unregistered supe.”
The words hit Hughie like ice water. Unregistered. Like she was inventory. Like she belonged in a database somewhere. A-Train was still staring at her from the pavement with naked panic in his eyes. And suddenly, Hughie understood something instinctively.
The worst part of this wasn’t that she’d survived. It was that everyone around her already seemed to think survival meant she stopped being a normal person.
The conference room on the ninety-ninth floor of Vought Tower had gone completely silent. Not tense silent. Wrong silent. The kind where nobody wanted to speak first because speaking would make the situation real.
On the massive wall display, shaky cellphone footage replayed again. And again. And again. A junior analytics employee stood frozen beside the monitor controls, looking one heartbeat away from vomiting.
Still frame: a woman in a green jacket stepping off a curb.
Playback: Blue blur. Impact. A-Train’s body snapping violently sideways.
Pause.
The room stayed silent. At the head of the table, Stan Edgar watched the frozen image calmly with his hands folded. Several executives avoided looking directly at Homelander. Which meant everyone kept accidentally looking at him anyway.
Homelander sat leaning back in his chair, one arm hanging loosely over the side like he was bored. But his eyes never left the screen. “Run it slower,” he said softly.
The technician obeyed immediately. The footage crawled frame by frame now. Pedestrians blurred through the rain. A-Train entering frame.
Then collision.
Even slowed down, the effect looked impossible. A-Train folded around her. Not through her. Not past her. Around her. Like he’d hit something immovable. His leg was visibly shattered on impact. The woman barely shifted. Homelander leaned forward slightly. That tiny movement made half the room tense. The footage ended with A-Train tumbling down the street in a spray of sparks and blood. Silence.
Then: “No registered V exposure,” one executive said carefully. “No pediatric program records either.”
Another chimed in nervously, “We’re running facial recognition through every affiliated hospital network now.”
“No known supe relatives.”
“No classified test subjects matching her description.”
Homelander finally looked away from the screen. “Interesting.” Nobody responded. Because his calm was always worse.
Stan Edgar spoke evenly from the head of the table. “A-Train?”
A woman near the end swallowed before answering. “Compound fracture to the femur. Extensive tissue damage from secondary impact.” A pause. Then: “He keeps insisting she didn’t move.”
Homelander smiled faintly at that. Not amused. Intrigued. “She didn’t.” The room went still again.
One executive cleared his throat carefully. “With respect, Homelander, there are several durability-based explanations that could—”
“No.” Homelander stood. The movement was unhurried. Which somehow made everyone more nervous. He walked toward the screen slowly. The frozen image of Hughie filled the wall now: rain-damp hair, stunned expression, untouched body standing in the middle of chaos. Tiny. Ordinary-looking. Impossible. “She didn’t brace,” Homelander said quietly. Nobody interrupted him. “She didn’t expect impact.” His eyes narrowed slightly. “She didn’t even know.”
That unsettled him. The room could tell. Because if this woman had been trained… engineered… prepared… Then she made sense. But instinctive invulnerability? Something unconscious enough to activate automatically against A-Train at full speed? That was different. That implied something deeper than standard Compound V enhancement. Something fundamental.
Stan Edgar watched Homelander carefully. “You believe she represents a threat?”
Homelander tilted his head slightly. “A threat to who?” Nobody answered. Homelander looked back toward the footage. The woman stepping into traffic. Distracted. Human. Then suddenly something else entirely. And for one brief moment, something flickered across Homelander’s face that almost nobody in the room had ever seen before. Recognition. Not certainty. Recognition. Like some deeply isolated part of him had noticed another living thing moving in the dark. Then it vanished. “Where is she now?” he asked.
A nervous assistant checked a tablet immediately. “Still at the scene with Crisis Management. Ashley Barrett is handling direct containment.”
“Containment,” Homelander repeated mildly.
The assistant visibly paled. “I mean— public relations stabilisation.”
A small smile tugged at Homelander’s mouth. “She’s scared,” he said quietly. “You can see it in her posture.” Nobody knew how to respond to that. Homelander turned from the screen toward the windows overlooking Manhattan below. “She survived something impossible in front of thousands of people,” he continued. “And now everyone around her is treating her like a bomb.” Far below, tiny police lights flickered through wet streets. “She’s alone already,” Homelander murmured.
Stan Edgar’s eyes narrowed slightly. Because that did not sound like tactical analysis. That sounded personal.
Homelander glanced back over his shoulder. “No labs,” he said. A beat of silence. Then: “No cages. No black-site bullshit.”
One executive blinked in surprise. “You want us to let her walk?”
Homelander’s expression softened almost imperceptibly. “I want to meet her before you idiots convince her she’s an enemy.”
Nobody in the room liked the way he said that. Because it sounded less like corporate strategy… and more like concern.
A sonic boom cracked through the windows a second later. Papers were lifted from the conference table. And Homelander vanished into the sky.
The apartment smelled faintly like burnt toast. Hughie stood just inside the front door, dripping rainwater onto the floor, while her father stared at her like she’d brought something dangerous home with her.
“You’re on every channel,” he said. Not angry. Not even shocked anymore. Just overwhelmed.
The television behind him played shaky cellphone footage for what had to be the twentieth time that hour. A-Train exploding into frame. The collision. His body cartwheeling violently down the street. Freeze frame on Hughie standing untouched in the middle of the intersection.
The chyron beneath it read: MYSTERY WOMAN HOSPITALIZES A-TRAIN
Hughie looked away immediately. “I didn’t hospitalise him.”
Her father muted the TV. The silence afterwards felt worse. “You should sit down.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’ve said that six times since you walked in.”
“Because I am fine.” Too fast. Too sharp. They both noticed it. Hughie closed her eyes briefly. “Sorry.”
Her father’s expression softened instantly at the apology, which somehow made her feel worse. “You don’t have to apologise, kiddo.” The words twisted painfully in her chest. Because normally, they would’ve comforted her. Tonight, they just sounded distant. Unreal. Her father approached carefully like she might spook. “Did the doctors say anything?”
“They kept scanning me.”
“Scanning you?”
“They thought something was wrong with the machines.” She laughed once. A small, ugly sound. “Nobody could understand why nothing was broken.” Her father swallowed hard.
The apartment suddenly felt tiny around them. Too warm. Too close. On the muted television, footage continued replaying silently. Again. Again. Again.
Her father looked at the screen. Then at her. Then, finally asked the question neither of them wanted to say out loud. “Were you hurt at all?”
Hughie opened her mouth automatically. Stopped. Because the answer was no. Not bruised. Not scraped. Not sore. Nothing. And now that she was paying attention… that felt wrong. She slowly pulled off her ruined sneaker. The front half had nearly split open from the impact. Rubber shredded outward. But her foot inside looked untouched.
Perfect.
Her father stared. Hughie stared too. No swelling. No marks. No pressure bruising. Nothing. The room became unbearably quiet. Then her father whispered: “Jesus Christ.” And there it was. Not fear exactly. But the beginning of it.
Hughie saw it happen in real time. The tiny instinctive recoil in his expression. The subconscious recalculation. Like some ancient part of his brain suddenly wasn’t sure what she was anymore. It lasted less than a second. He immediately tried covering it with concern. But Hughie had already seen it. And once she saw it, she couldn’t unsee it.
Her chest tightened painfully. “Dad…”
“I’m just worried.”
“I know.” But now she was worried too. Not about what happened. About what happened to everyone afterwards. Because nobody looked at her normally anymore. Not the medics. Not the crowd. Not Vought. Not even her father.
Her phone buzzed violently against the kitchen counter. Then again. And again. Notifications flooded endlessly across the screen.
UNKNOWN NUMBER: Are you a supe???
UNKNOWN NUMBER: holy shit that was INSANE
ROBIN: Please answer me
ROBIN: Hughie I’m serious
ROBIN: I’m coming over
Hughie grabbed the phone too quickly and nearly dropped it. Her hands were shaking now. Not from pain. Fear. Real fear. She clicked onto social media before she could stop herself. Instant regret. The videos were everywhere. Different angles. Different edits. Different captions. One slowed the impact down dramatically with music added underneath. Another zoomed directly onto her face after the collision. Comments scrolled endlessly beneath them.
SHE DIDN’T EVEN FLINCH
secret Vought experiment???
holy shit A-Train folded like paper
nah that ain’t human
imagine if Homelander fought her
she’s kinda hot tho
Vought definitely gonna disappear her
Hughie’s stomach turned. She kept scrolling anyway. Because she couldn’t stop. News channels already had side-by-side comparisons running: A-Train hitting walls, A-Train fighting Shockwave, A-Train surviving explosions. Then: A-Train breaks himself against a random woman crossing the street.
One commentator laughed nervously while saying, “Whatever she is… she may be stronger than she looks.”
Whatever she is. Not who. What. The apartment suddenly felt airless.
Hughie stood abruptly. “I need air.”
“Hughie—”
“I just need a second.” She grabbed her jacket and stepped into the hallway before he could stop her. The door shut behind her harder than she intended. Silence swallowed the corridor immediately. Old fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. Hughie leaned against the wall, trying to steady her breathing. Her reflection stared back at her faintly in the dark hallway window across from the stairwell. Same face. Same body. But now she couldn’t stop noticing the absence of damage. The impossible intactness of herself. Like she’d accidentally discovered she was made from the wrong material.
Her phone buzzed again. Robin calling. Hughie stared at the screen for several long seconds before finally answering.
“Hughie!” Robin sounded terrified. “Are you okay?” The question almost made her cry. Because she didn’t know anymore.
“I think so,” Hughie whispered.
A long silence followed. Then Robin asked carefully: “What happened to you?”
And that question scared Hughie more than the accident itself. Because somewhere deep down… she was beginning to realise she might not know the answer.
The bar smelled like old beer and wet coats. Hughie regretted coming almost immediately. Not because the place was dangerous. Because it was crowded. And ever since the accident, crowds felt different. Every laugh is too loud. Every glance too long. Every phone is potentially recording her.
The television above the bar was muted, but she still caught sight of herself reflected there between liquor bottles. Freeze frame: her standing untouched in the intersection. Again. Again. Again.
She looked away hard enough to make her neck ache.
“You’re on the telly more than the bloody mayor.” The voice came from beside her.
Hughie startled slightly. The man sitting one stool over looked vaguely homeless in an intentional way: heavy coat, scruffy beard, tired eyes that somehow still looked sharp enough to cut glass. Billy Butcher.
Though she didn’t know that yet.
He lifted his whiskey slightly toward the television. “Congratulations.”
Hughie immediately tensed. “Can I help you?”
“Maybe.” His gaze drifted over her casually. Too casually. Like he was pretending not to study her. “You the bird what folded A-Train?”
“I didn’t fold anybody.”
“But his leg folded, didn’t it?”
Hughie’s stomach tightened. The bartender set down her drink. She hadn’t ordered one. “I didn’t buy that.”
“I did,” Butcher said.
“I don’t want—”
“Then don’t drink it.” His tone stayed easy. Almost amused. That somehow made him more unsettling.
Hughie considered leaving. Probably should leave. But exhaustion pinned her to the stool. Every conversation for the last twenty-four hours had felt like: interrogation, panic, pity, fear. This man just sounded curious. Dangerously curious. But still. Different.
“You with Vought?” she asked quietly.
Butcher barked a laugh into his whiskey. “Christ, no.” The certainty in that answer surprised her. He glanced sideways at her. “You hurt anywhere?”
“No.”
“Not even sore?”
“No.”
“That’s weird, innit?”
Hughie’s jaw tightened immediately. “I know it’s weird.”
“Easy, tiger.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.” Butcher took another drink. Then casually knocked his empty glass off the counter with his elbow. It shattered beside Hughie’s stool. Sharp enough to make several people nearby flinch.
Hughie did too instinctively— But not from fear of getting cut. That realisation hit her a split second later.
Butcher noticed. Of course, he noticed. His eyes flicked downward briefly. A long shard of broken glass rested against Hughie’s ankle. No blood. Through her tights, but not even a scratch on her leg. The glass had snapped instead.
Hughie stared at it. Her breathing started speeding up immediately.
“Oh, that’s new,” Butcher murmured softly.
“You did that on purpose.”
“Maybe.”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“A long list, sweetheart.”
Hughie shoved back from the stool too quickly. “I’m leaving.” Butcher caught her wrist. Not hard. But fast enough to stop her momentum. Every muscle in Hughie’s body locked instantly. Not because she thought he’d hurt her. Because she suddenly realised he couldn’t. That thought hit like vertigo.
Butcher felt it happen. The moment she understood. His expression sharpened. Interesting, that look seemed to say. Very interesting. Then he squeezed. Hard. A normal person would’ve winced. Bruised. Pulled away.
Hughie felt pressure. Nothing else.
Butcher’s eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. “Well,” he said quietly, “that’s not natural.”
Hughie jerked her arm back anyway. More offended than hurt. “You don’t get to touch me.”
“Fair enough.” Butcher leaned back again like nothing had happened. Which somehow felt more invasive.
Hughie looked around suddenly. The entire bar felt wrong now. Too small. Too warm. She grabbed her jacket. “I don’t know who you are—”
“Billy Butcher.”
“I don’t care.”
“That’s healthy.”
“But if you think I’m some kind of supe—”
“Aren’t you?” The question landed harder than she expected. Because she still didn’t have an answer. Butcher watched the uncertainty spread across her face carefully. Not mocking. Studying. “You know what your problem is?” he asked.
Hughie laughed once incredulously. “I have several, actually.”
“You still think this is temporary.” Her chest tightened. Butcher nodded toward the muted television above the bar. Toward her own face frozen on-screen. “You think if you panic enough, apologise enough, explain enough…” he said quietly, “…everybody’ll start looking at you normally again,” Hughie said nothing. Because that was exactly what she’d been hoping. Butcher finished her drink. “They won’t.” Silence stretched between them. Heavy. Then Butcher stood. For a second, Hughie thought he was leaving. Instead, he leaned closer just enough that nobody else in the bar could hear him. And quietly said: “Vought’s terrified of you.” Hughie’s stomach dropped instantly. “They don’t get scared easy.” Then he walked toward the exit without another word. Hughie stared after him.
The bartender approached carefully. “You know that guy?”
“No,” Hughie whispered. But even saying it, she wasn’t sure if it was true anymore.
Outside the bar windows, somewhere high above the city, a sonic boom rolled faintly across the night sky. And for reasons she couldn’t explain… Hughie suddenly felt watched.
The apartment was quiet when Hughie got home. Too quiet. The kind of silence that presses against your ears until every tiny sound starts feeling invasive. Keys hitting the counter. The hum of the refrigerator. Her own breathing. Her father had apparently gone to bed already, though a light still glowed faintly beneath his bedroom door at the end of the hall.
Hughie stood motionless in the kitchen for a long moment, jacket still on, rainwater cooling against the back of her neck. Then she looked down at her wrist. The one Butcher had grabbed. Nothing. No redness. No pressure marks. No fingerprints. She rubbed at the skin anyway. Still nothing. Her stomach twisted.
The bathroom light flickered once before turning on fully when she entered. Hughie stared at herself in the mirror. Same face. Same tired eyes. Same damp hair curling slightly from the rain.
Normal.
She looked normal. So why did everybody keep looking at her like she was something else? Slowly, she peeled back the ruined tights around her ankle where the broken glass had hit earlier. No cuts. Not even tiny ones. The memory replayed sharply in her head: the shard snapping against her skin. Like it had hit metal.
“No,” she whispered immediately. Her voice sounded too loud in the tiny bathroom. “No, no, no…” She opened the medicine cabinet with shaking hands. Painkillers. Bandages. Tweezers. A pair of small manicure scissors.
Hughie stared at them for several long seconds. Then laughed nervously at herself. “This is insane.” She picked them up anyway. Her hands shook harder now. Not excitement. Fear. Pure animal fear. Because some part of her already knew what was going to happen.
Very carefully, she pressed the tip of the scissors against the pad of her thumb. Nothing. No sensation except pressure. She pushed harder. The metal bent slightly sideways.
Hughie stopped breathing.
The scissors slipped from her hand and clattered loudly into the sink. For one horrible second, she just stared at them. Bent. The bathroom suddenly felt too small. Her pulse thundered painfully in her ears.
“No.” She grabbed the scissors again violently. This time, she jabbed downward hard enough that a normal person would’ve driven the blade through flesh. The tip snapped clean off. Pinged against the mirror and dropped into the sink.
Hughie jerked backwards so fast she slammed into the towel rack. Breathing ragged now. “No no no no—” Her reflection looked terrified. But untouched. Perfectly untouched.
A memory surfaced suddenly and without warning: Age eight. Falling off the jungle gym. The other kids panicking. But she hadn’t broken her arm. The doctors had called it lucky.
Another memory. Age thirteen. A car clipped her bike. No injuries. Lucky again.
Another. Fever dreams. Hospital lights. Her mother crying somewhere nearby.
Hughie grabbed the edge of the sink hard enough to crack the porcelain slightly beneath her grip. She froze. Slowly looked downward—a fracture spiderwebbed through the ceramic.
Hughie stumbled backwards immediately. “Oh, my God.” Her breathing tipped into hyperventilation. This wasn’t new. That realisation hit harder than anything else tonight. This wasn’t something that happened yesterday. Something had been wrong with her her entire life. She just hadn’t noticed. Or maybe— hadn’t wanted to notice.
Tears finally spilt over. Not graceful crying. Panicked. Humiliating. “What the fuck is happening to me?” The words echoed off the bathroom tile. She slid shakily down against the wall onto the floor, pulling her knees to her chest automatically, even though some irrational part of her knew nothing could physically hurt her there. That thought made her cry harder. Because fear still existed. Pain still existed. But now they were trapped entirely inside her head.
Her phone buzzed suddenly in the sink. Hughie flinched violently. Unknown Number. She ignored it. The phone buzzed again immediately.
UNKNOWN NUMBER: You should not be alone right now.
Her blood ran cold. Another message.
UNKNOWN NUMBER: Vought is monitoring your apartment building.
Hughie stared at the screen in horror. Then another text appeared.
UNKNOWN NUMBER: Don’t panic.
A beat.
UNKNOWN NUMBER: You’re being watched because they’re afraid of you.
Hughie’s stomach twisted instantly. Only one person had said that tonight. Butcher. Before she could decide whether to respond, a soft sound drifted from outside the apartment window. Not loud. Not dramatic. Just the faint crunch of shoes touching concrete somewhere above the building. Then silence.
Hughie stopped breathing. Slowly… she looked upward toward the ceiling. And somewhere high above the apartment complex, hidden in darkness beyond the rain clouds— something moved.
Hughie didn’t remember standing up. One second, she was sitting on the bathroom floor trying not to hyperventilate. Next, she was moving silently through the apartment with her pulse pounding hard enough to make her dizzy. Every light suddenly felt too bright. Every shadow wrong. Her father’s bedroom door remained closed down the hall.
She almost woke him. Almost. But what would she even say? There might be a god outside? The thought hit with sudden absurd clarity: if Homelander wanted to enter the apartment, a locked door meant nothing.
Another faint sound drifted from outside. Not movement this time. Weight. Like something impossibly heavy settling carefully onto concrete. The fire escape. Hughie stared toward the living room window. Rain streaked softly down the glass. Nothing there. Then— A shape descended slowly past the window. Not falling. Floating. Red boots. American flag cape shifting lazily behind him in the wind. Homelander stopped level with the apartment. And smiled.
Hughie physically froze. Not metaphorically. Every muscle locked. Because seeing him in person triggered something primal and immediate: the understanding that this was not a celebrity. Not really. This was something people had built religions around by accident.
Homelander tapped lightly on the glass. Friendly. Almost playful. Hughie’s body finally obeyed her enough to move backwards one step.
The window slid open on its own. Wind curled through the apartment, carrying cold rain and the faint smell of ozone. Homelander stepped inside like he belonged there. Like entering strangers’ homes at midnight was completely normal. Maybe for him it was.
“Sorry about the theatrics,” he said pleasantly. “The front door felt impersonal.” Hughie couldn’t speak.
Homelander looked around the apartment briefly. Small kitchen. Old furniture. Family photos. His gaze paused for half a second on one picture: Hughie as a child sitting on her father’s shoulders at Coney Island. Then his attention returned fully to her. And sharpened. Up close, he was somehow worse. Too perfect. His smile sat exactly where smiles were supposed to sit, but nothing about it felt natural. Like a wolf had studied human expressions academically.
“You’re scared,” he observed gently.
Hughie finally found her voice. “You’re in my apartment.”
“Yes.” The simple honesty somehow made it more unsettling. Homelander tilted his head slightly. “You know,” he said softly, “most people cry when they meet me.”
Hughie swallowed hard. “I think I’m still in shock.”
“That’s fair.” His eyes drifted slowly over her face. Not flirtatious. Clinical. Curious. Like he was trying to solve something. “You really didn’t know?” he asked quietly.
Hughie frowned faintly. “Know what?”
“That you were different.” The word landed strangely. Different. Not powerful. Not special. Different.
Hughie crossed her arms tightly without thinking. “I’m not a supe.”
Homelander’s smile widened just slightly. “That’s the interesting part.” Silence stretched. Rain tapped softly against the open window behind him. Far below, distant sirens echoed through the city.
Homelander stepped closer. Not aggressively. But close enough now that Hughie could see tiny details: the faint gold flecks in his eyes, the almost unnatural stillness of him, the complete absence of ordinary human tension in his body. Predators didn’t tense unless they intended violence. And somehow that realisation terrified her more.
“You know what happens,” Homelander said quietly, “when A-Train hits an ordinary person?” Hughie said nothing. “You explode.” Matter-of-fact. Like discussing the weather. “He’s done it before.” A pause. “More than once.” Hughie felt sick. Homelander studied her reaction carefully. And for one brief moment, something strange flickered across his face. Approval. Not because she was horrified. Because she still could be. “You’re not reacting like a supe,” he murmured almost to himself.
“What does that mean?”
“It means most of them stop being scared eventually.” That sentence landed harder than anything else he’d said. Because beneath the calm tone… There was loneliness in it. Ancient loneliness. Homelander suddenly reached toward her face. Fast. Too fast to track. Hughie flinched instinctively—
CRACK.
The wall behind her exploded outward. Plaster rained onto the floor. Homelander’s finger rested lightly against the centre of her forehead.
He’d flicked her. The force should’ve shattered bone. Killed her instantly. Hughie stared at him in frozen horror. Completely unharmed.
Neither of them moved. A long silence filled the apartment. Then slowly… Homelander lowered his hand. And for the first time since entering the room, he looked unsettled. Not angry. Not amused. Uncertain. His eyes searched her face intensely now. Like he was looking for answers hidden under her skin.
“Interesting,” he whispered.
Hughie’s breathing turned ragged again. “What are you?” The question came out smaller than she intended. And something shifted in Homelander’s expression immediately. Not superiority. Recognition. Because for perhaps the first time in years… someone had asked him that exact question with genuine fear and confusion. Not worship. Not hatred. Understanding.
Homelander glanced toward the cracked wall behind her. Then back at her. And quietly said: “That’s what I came here to ask you.” Silence. Rain. The distant hum of the city below. Then, unexpectedly, Homelander smiled again. Smaller this time. Almost real. “You should lock your windows,” he said casually.
And before Hughie could respond, he vanished upward into the night sky. The sonic boom rattled the apartment a second later. Hughie stood motionless in the wrecked living room. Rain was blowing softly through the shattered wall behind her. Then her knees finally gave out. She collapsed onto the floor, shaking violently. Not from injury. From the horrifying realisation that Homelander had looked at her tonight… …and seen something familiar.