eighteen

They forged a weapon out of her little girl.

The little girl that Brooke was denied, over and over again, from seeing beyond slivers of seconds of glimpses of.

The little girl that's eyes weren't ever even open when she saw her, for Brooke to know if they were pink like hers.

The little girl who was still, still, still her little girl.

Brooke did not feel sick at this revelation. It shocked her, really, that her stomach did not turn at the fact that they kept her daughter frozen so young and contained and tried to – succeeded at – morphing her into something that could destroy. They wanted Supers in the war; they now had one who was more than that, someone who was not even viewed as a someone, but a thing.

No, Brooke was not sick over this.

She was furious.

"Do you think," she says, her voice unrecognizable in her own ears, her hand weightless as it lands back on top of Ben's, her eyes empty when they float back over to The Boys, who do look like a collection of mercenaries to be referenced as such in this moment, "that she could kill Homelander?"

Silence crackled like lightning in the room. Brooke did not miss how striking the resemblance of the silence was to the strikes of her daughter's powers. Her powers, not at all like her parents', but just as detrimental under the wrong supervision.

Ben's mouth opens slowly. He's hesitating. Why? She snaps her head over to look at him. "Why?"

Odd.

How odd for him to ask what she's thinking of him in her head.

Why does he question that their son needs to die?

"Their son" tastes like ashy venom in her mouth. "Their son" implies they had any consent in the manner. "Their son" implies she stakes any claim in that monster.

"You're not allowed to get cold feet now," Butcher snarls, jabbing a finger in their direction, "not after all that blasted shit you made us go through."

Ben does not break. "I am asking why you want to weaponize our daughter when the plan never involved her in the first place."

Brooke steadies herself. The room is silent again, the lightning still lingering and zapping at her skin.

She got lost in her own rage and didn't realize that he was right. Shame whittled her bones thin and weak.

He squeezes her hand, his fingers locking around hers.

"No, Butcher, I am not pussying out of your ungodly need to kill my kid," Ben continues, his voice getting louder with each word. The golden rim around his tea-green eyes is nearly aglow with the ferocity. "But if you lay a hand, a finger, a goddamn hair on my little girl–"

"Alright, al–"

"Not alright," Brooke interrupts, and in that moment, she caught movement behind M.M., finally noticing Annie. Her face was grim, if not a little haunted by it all. "No one is allowed to touch her unless it's to bring her to me or Ben."

Annie does not look away.

She nods once.

Brooke smiles at her. She isn't sure who exactly put this together: her or M.M., but either way, her heart hasn't felt this much warmth since before she was taken up in the plane to Russia.

Hughie props himself up on his palms on the tabletop. He glances at all of them, loosing a sigh. "So the plan is simple, really– Take out the bad guy. Save a child. They teach this stuff over at Godolkin, don't they?"

Butcher and Hughie were behaving differently. At least, Butcher was. Hughie was always antsy and erratic, but Butcher wasn't. It was unnerving and irritating, and nervewracking. For all of the expected reasons but mostly because Brooke was already amplifying their powers, it was impossible to predict what he would do when his eyes were ghastly and hollow and he kept snapping in and out of focus.

Only a part of Brooke was nervous to be face-to-face with Homelander. She hadn't ever been. Only seen the face of her creation in the distance.

She feared it would make her love him.

She feared, at the same time, that it would change nothing.

The building grows smaller every minute that passes that Homelander doesn't show. It's clear that no one knows how to act with the gang back together, either; Annie is making minimal but some small talk with Brooke and Hughie, M.M. is talking to Frenchie and Frenchie only, Butcher and Ben linger off to the side by the door for first notice to his arrival.

Nobody knows how to act because they act like nothing has changed.

The door, though, is not where Homelander appears. And unfortunately, surprisingly, he is not alone. A small boy is with him, one who looks somewhat frightened and mostly confused.

"Well," the American Flag that is her son says, his face pulled tight in a smile of plastic, "you've brought your whole party, Billy Butcher."

His eyes drift to the back wall, slide past the man he speaks to and land on Ben. His father.

Ben straightens. His eyebrows furrow and his jaw slackens. He trimmed his facial hair up again, combed his hair. Have to look good when I meet my daughter, he said, as if he didn't plan to be covered in the remains of their son.

Homelander's eyes begin to water. The traces of human emotion in something so manmade is so disarming that Brooke resists wincing. "And you. I hate meeting you like this."

"Because I'm going to kill you." Spoken like a fact, no ounce of hesitation to it. Brooke hates to say she sinks with relief. There was no doubt, never any doubt, but the reassurance means everything. Tell me we are doing the right thing, Ben. And he did.

Homelander tuts. "You don't have to. I mean– You're–" He suddenly grabs the little boy's arm, who startles and glances up at him. "I mean, look. Look. This is your– I want you to meet your grandson."

This was an attempt at a trump card, Brooke realizes, because Homelander was hoping that Ben didn't know.

She glances back again to read his face. Nothing. Unease creeps into her stomach if only because she is only slightly worried for the child. Her powers, too, are unpredictable. Ben is determined to meet Anastasiya.

Ben is riddled with trauma, rooted deep in his brain.

Ben is lost somewhere in his mind, on a one-track goal to kill Homelander and get to their daughter.

Ben will kill that little boy, and with her there, he will stop at nothing.

The rings around his eyes are glowing again, and Brooke can sense the force of power rising in his chest.

Homelander's face falls. "You knew." The human mask is gone and in his place is clay. The shell that this monster wears is see through. "You know that I'm your son."

"No," Ben's voice is guttural and raspy and nearly a primal growl, "you're a fucking disappointment."

The atoms in the air are shaking. Brooke feels them vibrating on the hairs of her arm. He's about to burst, and who is going to blow first: Homelander, or the boy? And she can't help but think that maybe him and Anastasiya aren't so different, because this feels like the moment before a lightning strike, and her heart wants to clench but–

Butcher punches Ben in the chest, knocking him backwards into the wall. The brick crumbles beneath his back as he falls against it. The room's electric current returns back to normal. Brooke breathes a steady enough breath to gasp in shock.

"What the fuck?" She blurts out, and for the first time, Homelander looks at her.

Ben and Butcher do not.

"You have a heart enough to keep the kid?" Ben spits out, and his eyes are still glowing a little, his rage still spewing like a feral animal in his chest.

Homelander is staring.

Hers and his stares do have an awareness to them, don't they? Even without the glow.

She turns to meet his eyes.

They barely lock for a second before he flares, attempting to light her up and fry her to a crisp.

Brooke is lucky, so lucky, that Butcher told her on an inkling of a theory that she could fly, because she leaps up in a futile effort to avoid that fate and suddenly she's hovering in the air.

Above the roof.

She crashed through the ceiling in her panic.

The adrenaline will wear off and she will have a headache for ten minutes later. She knows it. But it is the last of her worries as Homelander shoots after her through that gape in the ceiling now, too.

"Did you come thinking I would accept you as a mother?" Homelander spits at her, literally spits, he is so furious.

She is spitting mad too, her hands bursting into crystalfire, shooting liquid quartz at him. She misses once when he dodges out of the way, twice when he barely ducks, but hits him the third time in the elbow. "I would never want you as a son. I came to make sure you suffered."

He hisses through his teeth as the crystal crawled up his elbow, down it, spindling.

She needed one more shot, one, and she could knock his arm clean off. That was a petty papercut to a Super. Brooke just–

Inside the building, red lights begin to flash and an alarm starts blaring. The building below is evacuating.

She wishes she knew what was happening inside. She wishes this was not her battle.

Homelander's eyes are starting to glow red again, almost uncontrollably, when Brooke realizes her mistake. Her powers. She shot him and amplified him, and now she was undoubtedly a goner.

"What did you do?" He asks, his voice shaky from either the rage or the fear or both. "What did you do?"

Inside the building, there's a faint voice. A pleading. "I wanna go home!"

The eyes are gone. Pinched out like candlelight. They flicker back, and Homelander proceeds to burn a line through the side of the building. They flicker on and off like a light as he sinks back down into the building, even when Brooke notices he has his eyes forcibly shut.

Red behind the skin of his eyelids. Burning through. If he's in pain, he doesn't say anything. It will grow back.

Brooke shudders.

She is about to follow after him and check on everyone else when not even a minute later, Homelander and the little boy are propelling back through the hole and into the sky. Gone.

Brooke drops down from the roof.

The entire floor's lights are flickering. Restrained on the ground is Ben, his entire body protesting against Hughie and Annie. Butcher is passed out on the ground. Frenchie and Kimiko are on the other side of the room with M.M., talking in hushed whispers.

Brooke looks between them all.

Ben notices her. He stops fighting enough to growl through his teeth, "Tell them to get the fuck off of me or I'm going to fucking blow."

"You're going to fucking blow anyway," Frenchie says from the corner, waving his hand in his direction.

Brooke glares at him. She hasn't talked to him or Kimiko, hasn't even met Kimiko, but has ultimately decided that anyone with a British or French accent gets on her nerves. Kimiko she likes as much as Annie solely due to the women of The Boys having to stick together.

If she were even a member. She hoped not.

Brooke had a theory. It was likely not to work. But it spun around in her mind, and she was desperate to keep the building and the people on this floor still inside of it in tact.

She leans close to Ben and placed the crystal of her palm on the center of his chest, right over the star of his suit. She tried to imagine how it felt to amplify powers, even though it wasn't really an ability she was aware of but rather something in her blood. She tried to imagine how it would feel to reverse it.

If they were two sides of the same coin, surely she could flip it.

That was the reason for experimenting with dual sided powers, wasn't it? Making them each other's fail safes?

Ben's eyes fade into their usual green. Still bright, but the kind that makes your heart turn to liquid and your panties drop to the floor, not the kind to detonate.

"Hello again, Benjamin," she whispers while she leans in for a soft kiss.

He returns it softer than he ever had before, his nose brushing against hers when he pulled back.

Annie and Hughie release their holds. Slowly, they even begin to step back and away.

Hughie speaks up from behind them, his voice a little unsure and amused, "Benjamin?"

The shrill sound of a ringtone interrupts Ben's retort; Brooke recognizes it from Hughie's, and though this one is a little more dated, it's similar nonetheless.

M.M. pulls his phone out and puts it up to his ear. A few seconds of silence. Then, "Alright. Yeah. We'll be there."

Nobody says anything, but every set of eyes is on him expectantly.

The lightning is back in the air, and this time, this time Brooke really thinks it could be Anastasiya.

"Grace says they found her. They've got Patient Zero."