Work Text:
Ashes of Roses
Ashley walked quickly across the movie set, threading her way through the cables and the hurrying crew members, trying to stay out of their way. Two hours ago Stormfront had sent her a text reading simply, It’s done. Get in touch with me for details. So that meant the supe had gotten the false identification for her that they’d discussed on their last meeting, as well as tickets to some destination that would be far from Homelander, far enough away so as never to threaten their relationship again. Anxiety squeezed her chest, because she had finally decided to tell Homelander about the baby.
The cold, pragmatic part of her that had been molded by her childhood and the years in hiding was horrified. You can’t trust him. You know that down to your bone marrow. Why give him a chance to throw you into a detention cell under Vought Tower until the baby comes and he can rip her out of your arms and bestow her on Stormfront? None of that could be disputed. She knew it all, but still she had to give him a chance to do the decent thing by her and the baby.
Adam Bourke was sitting in his director’s chair, studying the Dawn of the Seven script pages that they would be shooting today, and she tapped him on the shoulder. “I need to talk to Homelander. Do you know where he is?”
He looked up at her with a smile, and it made her regret, just a little, that she hadn’t gone out with him when he’d asked her. But she’d been so wrapped up in her twin relationships, Shockwave and Homelander, that she’d had nothing left over for anyone as human as she was. “In his trailer, I think. We’re still getting the lighting set up for his next scene. Should be another thirty minutes or so.”
That should be time enough to make her confession, for him to react however he was going to react. Ashley summoned up a smile for him. “Thanks, Adam.”
“No problem,” he said before he returned his attention to the pages and she headed for the luxurious trailer that was one of Homelander’s contractual perks. She’d never seen the inside of it. Stormfront probably had.
Ashley knocked and waited, but nothing happened. Apparently Adam had been wrong about him being in his trailer. Best to wait for him inside, as she didn’t want people noticing her hanging around outside and wondering why. There’d be more than enough gossip going around about her later. The door was unlocked, which surprised her until she decided that nobody on set would be dumb enough to try to steal something out of Homelander’s trailer. She tried to tamp down her anxiety, but her body refused to obey.
The trailer was every bit as luxurious as she’d expected, and she tossed her purse into a chair before taking a little tour. It was all just meaningless activity meant to distract her from what was about to happen, try to bring down her heart rate and pulse before Homelander showed up, but the flowers changed everything. They sat there, red and white, and she suspected what this meant before she moved over to them and just stared. Roses, of course roses, the sickening heart pattern the florist had formed them into, and her hands were shaking by the time she plucked at the card and opened it. For Stormfront, naturally, as she was the supe, the worthy one, the one who deserved to have someone else’s child stolen and bestowed upon her. See? said that cold pragmatic part of her. You’re being stupid. He’ll steal your baby for her, just the way you believed he would. He feels nothing for you. He uses you to get his rocks off, nothing more. She probably wouldn’t agree to be submissive for him, so he went to you, his lackey, his broken little cocksheath. You have to be smarter than this now, for the baby. And, in the face of the roses, she had to accept that judgment.
She replaced the card—no need for him to know that she’d ever been here—and snatched up her purse, trying to hold back her tears, whether for the ruins of what she’d hoped might happen at the beginning of their relationship or for her own stupidity she didn’t know. So she would have to follow her original plans, use the existing false ID she had to book a flight to Europe and get to her safe house in Ibiza, put on the wedding and engagement rings she’d bought, get used to answering to a name that wasn’t hers yet again. Stormfront—well, she intended to ignore the text she’d received and let the supe wonder what had happened to her when she vanished.
When Ashley twisted the knob, it turned but the trailer's front door refused to open. With a sigh of exasperation, she rattled the knob harder, put her shoulder to it. She couldn’t afford a stuck door now, when she had to get out of this trailer before Homelander came back. If she was still here, he could easily realize she was pregnant, by her scent or just by using his X-ray vision on her, and then it was straight into a Vought detention cell until the baby was born and then he could do whatever he wanted with her: kill her, keep her there for his sexual use, have her handle Hero Management business from that cell. No, she couldn’t have that. She turned away from the front door and had taken a couple of steps toward the back door before she saw the one thing that underlined how unforgivably naïve and stupid she’d been.
A beam of red light sliced through the back of the trailer. Everywhere it touched it birthed flame, the insulation of the trailer lighting up, the paneling turning into almost liquid waves of fire and thick, choking smoke filled the trailer with terrifying speed. Standing there, frozen, watching the fire flowing over the floor, the ceiling, she had time enough to think, of course this is what happens. He didn’t even want a half-human baby for his precious supe girlfriend.
The another voice made itself heard in her mind. Okay, little bit! Door blocked, trailer burning, ninety seconds before you’re overcome by smoke! Options?
Back door? she thought.
You could try it, but I’d wager it’s blocked just like the front—if they went to that much trouble they’d block all doors—plus the rear of the trailer is completely involved with flame. Too dangerous. Options?
Ashley ignored the implications of the voice, that someone had blocked the trailer doors other than Homelander. It didn’t matter now, with the smoke invading her lungs, her racking coughs. Windows?
Seems a winner. They hardly had time to board them up.
Sure enough, the front window was still accessible after she’d ripped down the curtain and blinds, leaving them in a twisted mass on the floor. When she unlocked it and tried to shove it up, it didn’t clear the halfway point, leaving a space too small for her to squeeze through once she kicked out the screen. Break the glass, little bit, the ghost-voice told her.
My pleasure, she replied as she seized the container of fucking hateful roses and hurled it at the window with strength born of rage and resentment. The sound of glass shattering was beauty itself. She pulled off one of her shoes and used it to clear the window frame of the jagged pieces that remained, sticking her head outside for a few breaths of clean air. The smoke followed, though, billowing out the window in great gouts, and she felt the heat of the fire on her back. It hadn’t reached her yet, set her clothes and hair ablaze, but it was only a matter of time if she stayed. With a jerk she forced the window back into the closed position, which gave her enough room to get through. Imagine what would happen to you if you were nine months pregnant right now, said the ghost-voice. No getting through that window then. No saving yourself then.
She didn’t bother replying, fitting her shoe back onto her foot, grasping the window frame before putting a foot on the frame, then the other, and shoving with her arms to make herself fly through the window like a child flinging themselves onto a slide. With a hard thump she landed on the earth a few feet from the trailer, curled into a ball to protect the baby within her. Adrenalin still flooded her veins as she realized she had escaped, that she was safe. That she was still alive despite Homelander’s efforts.
Good job. Save my granddaughter, little bit.
Ashley got to her knees and took a look around. Nobody in sight; even though it felt like twenty minutes had passed, she’d made it out of the trailer within the ninety second grace period before she would have been overcome by smoke inhalation. The front door of the trailer was blocked from outside by a length of wood lodged under the doorknob. She got to her feet and tugged it loose, tossing it away. Quickly she moved to the back of the trailer and found her father’s voice had been right, and another beam under that knob held the door closed. She left that one in place, as the blaze would destroy it in the next minute or two and she couldn’t approach closely enough to remove it anyway. When she returned to the front of the trailer, she saw people running toward the burning trailer and she took enough time to open the front door, letting the smoke billow out and speeding the structure’s destruction. Before anyone could reach her, she saw the remains of Stormfront’s roses lying nearby, the bright red blooms, the pure white, and she crushed them under the sole of her Jimmy Choo pump, grinding them into the dirt the way she wished she could do to Stormfront. Homelander had never given her flowers, not even once.
“Ms. Barrett! Ms. Barrett!” The panicky cry came from the second assistant director, who reached her in time to put a hand under her arm as she staggered. “Are you all right?”
She nodded, putting on more a show of weakness than she felt. If Homelander was watching, and she was sure he was, she wanted him to think that he’d just missed succeeding in killing her, that only luck had saved her. He might be inspired to waste time planning a new death plot, and by then she would be gone.
“What happened?” The second AD, whose name she thought was Frank, drew her further from the trailer as the fire ate every piece of it. More people ran toward them, armed with fire extinguishers, and she almost laughed. Yeah, that’ll handle it.
“Don’t know.” Her voice was harsh and raspy when she spoke. “I was inside waiting for Homelander, and there was just fire all of a sudden. It started in the rear of the trailer. It was just—everywhere, within seconds.”
“Maybe electrical,” he muttered. Was it even possible that no one had seen Homelander using his laser vision to destroy his trailer? A sudden fit of coughing bent Ashley double, and Frank supported her while moving her to the front of a trailer several yards away, where one of the costume people had found a chair and dragged it out. They both helped Ashley to sit down. Frank instructed the costume person, “Okay, go to the medical truck and get an EMT and an oxygen tank. Ms. Barrett breathed in some smoke. I don’t know how much.”
“I couldn’t get out right away,” she told him once the costume person had left and the coughing had stopped. “I think the door jammed.” That’s right, little bit, her father’s voice told her. Play it stupid. Homelander and Stormfront already think that’s what you are. Use their preconceptions as a weapon against them. Although if Homelander had been watching, he’d seen her remove the wooden beam from under the doorknob. He’d know she didn’t think the door had jammed, but what he would do with that information she didn’t know. Plus, it didn’t matter; she planned to be gone by the weekend. That would give her two days before anyone knew she was missing. Never underestimate the value of a good head start.
After the EMT had examined her and she was settled in the chair, an oxygen mask fitted over her face, after everyone had deserted her to fight the trailer fire, she was free to look around. It didn’t take long to spot Homelander and Stormfront on top of a nearby building, silhouetted against the sky. The fresh, cool air from the tank flowed into her lungs as she thought. Could this have been at Stormfront’s behest? Could she have told him, “If you love me, you’ll kill her to prove it?” And he’d done it, like the child desperate for love that he was, and only the love of someone as powerful as he was would do. Ashley’s own love was nothing to him.
You may be jumping to conclusions. That wasn’t her father’s voice but the cowardly voice inside her that wanted to stay where it was, wanted nothing to change—the Ashley voice. It might have had nothing to do with you, him destroying the trailer. He might just have been throwing a tantrum over something. He might not have bothered to use his X-ray vision to see if the trailer was empty. He might have assumed it was. And blocking the doors, that just isn't his style.
Can’t afford to take the chance, her father’s voice responded. Not with my granddaughter’s life on the line. Must assume that he intended to kill you, little bit, and take appropriate measures.
The Ashley voice fell silent in her mind. She had to start shucking off this identity. Ashley Barrett no longer served her but weakened her. Ashley Barrett was a normie, and a normie wasn’t what the current situation required. Ashley would get her killed if she allowed it. In fact, she’d almost done it today. She’d gotten rusty over the years she’d spent in this identity, subsumed herself in presenting as a normie. She’d gotten weak, and she could never allow that to happen again. Her gaze went back to Stormfront and Homelander, still on the rooftop looking at the destruction on the movie set. How good was his eyesight, not the X-ray or the laser but his regular human vision? Could he see that she had noticed them, was looking at them? The fact was that, if Stormfront wasn’t in the picture, he wouldn’t have done this. Things would have gone along the way they had been. But, again, it didn’t matter. By this weekend she would be gone. She turned her gaze back to the flowers crushed in the dirt.
Bitch, you don’t even know who I am.