nineteen

The car ride is just four people: Brooke, Ben, Hughie, and Butcher. Butcher sat in the passenger seat against his will instead of behind the wheel after his fainting spell. Hughie came to make sure that he made it home safely after this.

Because Brooke did not intend to stay with them, she decided quickly after M.M.'s announcement.

That was always her goal. Ben. Anastasiya. Malibu.

Slowly, somehow, those pieces each were falling into place. She would have her little girl, and while she didn't get to raise her, she would get to have her while she was still relatively young. Young for Brooke and Ben.

Young for her.

She would probably age like them, in the sense that she would not.

She would also need help in developing her powers. She would need help unraveling her trauma in the labs, because it was far more extensive than her parents' was.

It was much more parenting than Brooke ever hoped to get, as selfish as it sounded.

A smile crept onto her face. A smile that quickly became tears.

Grace Mallory's house was far into the middle of nowhere, which made sense but was an impossible drive to make while knowing what awaited her.

She did not let go of Ben's hand the whole way.

Ben was calm. She partly wondered if she ruined him when she vanished his outburst, but no, there in his chest was a pounding heart, beating quickly against his ribcage.

Occasionally he would glance down and meet her eyes, and she would see in that melty green all of the emotions that she felt. Panic. Worry. Excitement. Devastation.

"What did M.M. say, exactly?" Hughie asks, his fingers tapping on the steering wheel.

Butcher grunts. "I'm not bloody telling when you won't let me goddamn–"

"Yeah, yeah, but what did he say?"

"She's got Mrs. Petrov in custody until the authorities can get there with the proper charges and Missus Petrov is alive and well." He smiles tightly at him, glancing over his shoulder at Brooke and Ben in the back, too. "Happy?"

Ben shakes his head, the first movement he's made in nearing an hour. "No."

"No?" Butcher sits up a little, his eyebrows to his hairline. "Well why not?"

"It's not Missus Petrov," Ben says it like it burns his mouth on the way out, "she's our daughter, not hers."

"Tell that to the woman who actually raised her."

Brooke kicks the back of his seat. "Tell that to the woman who birthed her." She sits back dramatically, falling half against Ben's chest. "Need I remind you that you lost your not-kid?"

Butcher is silent for a few minutes. "Fair play."

The driveway is long and gravelly, leading to a house built like a log-cabin. Deep green trees and grass fill the yard.

On the front porch sits Grace Mallory. Brooke would know the blonde hair anywhere, still tied so tightly that she's sure that it plucks right off just like that.

There are two other cars in front of where Hughie parks. Brooke figures it's Grace's and Natalya's, one of which will have to be disposed of after Ben gets his hands on Natalya's neck.

But there are more important manners than vengeance and murder.

That's always been what she's thought, always been her goal. There was always her little girl, somewhere out there, waiting for her. Except in her mind she wasn't always little.

Now she was here, and now she was proven to be a child still.

"You made it here alive," Grace calls from the porch.

Butcher leans his back against the car door. "Aye, which one of us are you talking to?"

She stands up from her chair. "All of you, really. You're all an unpredictable mess."

"Where is she?" Ben asks, and his voice wavers at the end. Even though they try, the nerves sneak up and fry their words.

Grace purses her lips. "Inside. Reading." She hesitates, a little frown pulling her face down. "She's not going to be what you expect."

"She's our daughter," Brooke says this time, shaking her head in disbelief. How could anything disappoint her? "Why would we be upset?"

Grace watches them for a moment longer before she concedes, nodding them closer. Inviting them in.

Inviting them into the home that currently housed Anastasiya.

The drive felt long but the walk from the driveway to the front door felt impossibly short. Brooke felt like she crossed it in two steps, her hand numb from how tightly she gripped Ben's.

Grace's hand rested on the doorknob. Up close, she looked even more frowny. "I don't know what they did to her there," she says, her voice low, "but she's almost like a shell. That's what I meant when I said you wouldn't expect."

"Just let us see her." Ben nods firmly at the door.

Grace opens it.

It's cozy inside, and not at all how Brooke expected Grace to decorate.

She expected all white and square and rectangle, no personality, no semblance of humanity. What she got was warm golden tones to match the log cabin exterior, soft pale blue throw pillows and blankets, washes of golden lamplight, and–

A flood of dark hair bent over tucked in large grey sweatpants, the edges of a paperback book sticking out the side of her lap.

The door closes with a soft click, no squeak despite the slight age to the house. Yet, still, the girl that is their daughter does not raise her head.

"Sweetheart," Grace says in a soft, gentle voice, "you've got company."

Her tone suggests she's tried this many times already.

The girl lifting her head then suggests it is the only thing that makes her react.

Eyes the color of green tea meet Brooke's first, and then Ben's, and when they lock on his, he falls to his knees.

She has her hair color, that deep brown that rivals dark chocolate. But Ben's sweet green eyes. Her face is soft and so, so youthful, so impossibly young, Brooke still can't wrap her head around this reality, and she is beautiful.

Anastasiya is beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.

Her expression is so, so empty, though. She looked between both of them but did not seem to see them.

"Hello," Brooke tries, because it is clear that Anastasiya is not able or willing to bridge this gap.

She only blinks a few times.

"Does she speak English?" Ben asks Grace without looking away from Anastasiya. Their daughter shifts her attention to him again and Brooke thinks that he might crumble to dust, but he stays upright on his knees. "Or–"

"She understands English," Grace clarifies. Anastasiya cocks her head to the side, her eyebrows pinching just a little in the middle while she studies Ben. "Speaks? I don't know. She has yet to say a word to me."

Ben's lips turn up at the corners. "I haven't had the chance to introduce myself to you, sweetheart, have I?"

She still says nothing, just stares. Studies.

Grace's head drops. "My agents were thinking that she could have been trained to be a sleeper agent, while in the lab, after reading her documents. That she was put into this semi-lucid state to be less defiant during the experiments."

"What's the– The fucking, you know," Ben snaps his fingers. "The unlock word."

Brooke blinks a few times, trying to think back to the few times that she saw her. Every time she asked for her, they brought her out only when she called her my baby. When she asked for Anastasiya, they withheld her.

They never referred to her by name in her documents.

She put a hand on Ben's shoulder as she walks past him, giving him a little squeeze.

She was so scared of what would happen if she was wrong. If her daughter would take her life just as her and Ben tried to take Homelander's, like a full circle moment. But she couldn't not try.

Brooke kneels in front of Anastasiya, her hands shaking between her knees, meeting those cool, dead eyes head on.

She smiles as warmly as she can muster. It comes so much easier than she expects. "My name is Brooke Riley. Behind me? That is your father, who you never once got to meet, or even know existed, Benjamin Anderson. I'm your mom. I got to look at you a few times, I got to hear what they named you. I heard you cry a few times before I stopped hearing you altogether. I got just those tiny glimpses of you before they locked me away, just like I know they eventually did to you too."

Part of her doesn't think that Anastasiya can even hear her. The other part doesn't care, clinging so desperately to the line of hope that it blindly is leading her to continue.

"We were sent to the labs by greedy, selfish people. That is why you were born there. I am sorry that that happened to you, that you ever had to go through that, that you never got a proper family. You never got a mother, or a father, a sane brother, a school, a house. It's something that we're going to live with and try to fix every day that we're with you again," Brooke's voice starts to shake, the tears lining her eyes, yet her smile unwavering, "because you are coming home with us, Anastasiya."

The flip is nearly immediate, because why would they make a weapon without a fail safe?

Her eyes light with that glimmering green that Ben's gets, the one that melts just for Brooke and now just for her, too.

The book in her lap drops to the floor.

And when Anastasiya speaks, her voice is soft and lilting and like a melody of its own. "Hi mom."

Brooke tosses her arms around her daughter's neck. Buries her face in her hair. Breathes her in so deeply that she knows she will never forget this moment, promises herself that she can't.

A stronger pair of arms tightens around her too, and Brooke sinks into it. "Dad," Anastasiya muffles through Brooke's shirt. Her grip tightens around the both of them, her arms shaking. It takes a second to realize she's crying.

"Hey, princess," Ben says, and Brooke feels a wet droplet fall on her shoulder and realizes he is too.

Maybe time itself is broken in the Mallory home.

Monumental occasions pass by like fleeting seconds. Devastating ones last eternity.

A strong arm grips Brooke's arm again and she bites back her surprise. There is no time to fight back, not even a second to curse, as handcuffs are being slapped around her wrist.

She didn't think twice when Ben removed himself from the hug because he immediately tapped her. Except it wasn't him, because Ben was being cuffed and gagged. Now snarling and dozing against whatever toxin they put on it, still fighting despite knowing that it was fruitless.

"What the fuck?" Brooke asks, spluttering on the words, her eyes shifting over to Anastasiya.

Anastasiya cowers on the couch, holding her legs tightly to her chest, her head buried in her knees.

Grace still stands in the doorway where she was. "This was the price," she says, and dare she even sound regretful about it, as she trades a life for two, splits a family down the middle, betrays them again.

"You're a monster!" Brooke shouts, snapping her head left and right to avoid the gag that the agents, Grace's agents keep trying to shove into her mouth. "A monster!"

"It was the only way that I could get Anastasiya," Grace explains, still frowning. "And keep the coward of a doctor that Natalya Petrov works for silent. Dimitri would have been bribed. Nikolai is too slimy."

Brooke won't stop shaking. She can't. She was supposed to go to Malibu with Ben and Anastasiya. They were supposed to–

The gag finds its way inside of Brooke's mouth. The taste of the toxin is familiar, like the air inside of the cryochamber she was in for years and years. Power suppressant.

She fights it. She fights it so violently that her eyes stay open long enough to see a girl with long blonde hair and bangs walk in right before they storm hers and Ben's limp bodies out of the living room.

The girl stops in front of Anastasiya, one gloved hand behind her back. Brooke's eyes glaze. The girl places a bare hand on Anastasiya's arm, and in a voice that Brooke can only faintly hear, says, "I'm gonna need you to forget this." 

END.