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It was his first year in prison.
If he were to tally his losses, the list would stretch endlessly.
Nine kilograms, two molars, and the sharpness of his senses were minor compared to what truly mattered. His power was gone. But not just the brute physicality that once allowed him to crush, burn, destroy, and defy the sound barrier. No, it was the deeper loss: the power to bend the world to his will, to dictate terms, to command a seat at the table where authority was carved into pieces and shared, while the masses scavenged for crumbs. For decades, he had been a public slave—a compliant mascot for Vought, a puppet reciting scripted lines and performing tricks. Then, for the first time, he had tasted freedom. True freedom. But the feast had ended before the main course was served.
His freedom.
Once again, it was gone. Once again, time no longer belonged to him. His days blurred into a grotesque carousel of monotonous routines that filled every crack and crevice, like an overinflated airbag. There was no peace in it, no order. It was a performance designed to preserve his body and prop up the illusion of justice for the world to applaud. He felt like a rat on a wheel, endlessly spinning. A rat fed drop by drop—not out of mercy, but to keep it alive. True mercy would have been death. But as his lawyer once told him, free euthanasia had been axed from public services years ago. The only chairs left in federal prisons were cheap, plastic ones—fragile, much like the image he once embodied.
His image.
That was gone too. The persona Vought’s masterful PR machine had built over decades—the polished marble façade of a god among men—was shattered. They had sculpted him into a work of art, a modern idol for the masses to worship. And how he had worshipped it himself. A vision of perfection. A dream spun from smoke and glass. Now, when he stared into the mirror, something still stared back—but it wasn’t his face. It was a stranger wearing his skin.
What else had he lost?
The money in his bank accounts—though it had never truly been his.
The penthouse atop the tower—a gilded cage he had mistaken for a palace.
His allies—sycophants and traitors, all of them.
His name.
His purpose.
His hope for tomorrow.
And most devastating of all—his son.
Ryan attended his trial, sitting stiffly among the survivors of Butcher’s team: cockroach-like Hughie and the stoic Black man whose name he couldn't remember. He had clung to a sliver of hope that they might speak, that he could explain himself. But his son didn’t stay for the verdict. He stayed just long enough to hear the testimonies, then left. His expression was unreadable.
Sage had played the long game. She had crowned herself queen and reduced him to a pawn, only to sacrifice him when the time came. He had lost everything.
And what had he gained?
Nothing.
Except time.
An endless, suffocating abundance of time. Time he didn’t want. Time he would have gladly surrendered, letting the jackals who tore him down feast on his bones. Anything would have been better than lingering here as a nameless, faceless ghost.
He had tried to give it back. Twice.
The first attempt was a calculated provocation. He picked a fight with a guard—a sadistic brute with a violent streak. He had hoped for a fatal beating, swift and final. But he misjudged. The guard was a sadist, yes, but not reckless. A broken nose and a fractured rib was all he got for his trouble.
The second attempt was pitiful by comparison. He smuggled a safety razor into his cell, but the cuts weren’t deep enough to finish the job—just enough to invite infection. Instead of escape, he earned a prescription: antidepressants and antipsychotics.
Ironically, they worked.
The pills dulled the pain, muted the noise in his head. For the first time, he began to understand why Maeve had turned to alcohol. The haze they created, the space they provided from his own thoughts—temporary, yes, but still a welcome relief.
Not only that—he was assigned a therapist. This wasn’t standard procedure. Most prisoners were stuck with the prison doctor, an indistinct figure who did little more than dole out prescriptions. But he overheard whispers that his situation had high-level backing—possibly even the FBI. He didn’t believe it was for his benefit. They weren’t trying to help him—they wanted to study him. They needed to understand how his mind worked, to predict and prevent any breakdowns in the growing population of Supes before they spiraled out of control. The state couldn’t afford another super-abled lunatic wreaking havoc on the capital just because of a bad day.
Of course, this suspicion didn’t exactly foster a productive relationship with his therapist.
He didn’t want to be probed and dissected. Didn’t want another state operative prying into his mind like a beekeeper hunting for honey among a swarm of wasps. For the first few sessions, he refused to engage. He wouldn’t even look at her. If he reacted at all, it was with hostility.
"I’m not interested in whatever game you’re playing," he snapped during one session. "I’m not Hannibal Lecter, and you’re not Clarice."
"I’m not here to seek your help," she replied coolly, her voice unwavering. "I’m here to help you—if you’ll allow me."
And no, he didn’t want to allow her. He never intended to. But she was persistent. She sat through every session with unwavering patience, her expression a quiet mask of determination. She waited for him to slip, to crack. And the isolation of prison, relentless and gnawing, wore him down in ways he hadn’t expected. Slowly, inevitably, his defenses began to crumble.
It reminded him of the childhood game he’d never had a chance to play—Red Light, Green Light. The players would race toward the finish line, while the caller, with their back turned, could shout «Red light!» at any moment, freezing them in their tracks. Every time his guard slipped, even for a second, she advanced. And as soon as his walls went up, she paused, waiting quietly for them to drop again. Inch by careful inch, she closed the distance.
One day, after countless rounds of this mental game, she stretched out her hand—and won.
What followed was a war of attrition: resistance, retaliation—brutal and relentless. But then came what she later referred to as transference.
During this time, a disorienting and humiliating thought began to creep into his mind: he might be in love with her. The realization hit him with the force of a blow. It was both absurd and disturbing, triggered by the strange truth that he had started fantasizing about her. For the first time in fifteen months of imprisonment, he sought sexual release. It felt foreign, wrong. She was far older than him, not his type by any stretch, and there was nothing outwardly sexual about her.
The worst part? She noticed. She sensed the shift in him—the subtle change in his demeanor—and with quiet precision, she called him out on it. She pointed to his childlike attempts to gain her approval, to prove his worth, but rather than mock him, she explained it away as something natural. A manifestation of deep-seated patterns, a mind trying to fulfill needs left unmet from the past.
Her words dug deep, forcing his mind to wander back to Madelyn. And once her name surfaced in his thoughts, it was impossible to stop. The dam had broken. The illusion shattered. The spell was gone.
The therapist had pushed him to reconsider Madelyn’s role in his life. Until then, he’d clung to a simple narrative: he loved her, and she betrayed him. But as their sessions dug deeper, the truth unraveled into something far more twisted than he’d ever dared admit.
The therapist used a word he despised: grooming.
At first, he rejected it outright. It felt like an insult, a reduction of him to some helpless victim—a naïve schoolgirl preyed upon by her lecherous teacher. That wasn’t him. He was no one’s victim. He was the strongest man in the world. But here, in prison, with nothing but time to sift through his memories, the word lingered. And the more he revisited the past, the harder it was to ignore the grain of truth in what she’d said.
As a boy, his love for Madelyn had been pure, unquestioning, and absolute. She had been his world—the only person who didn’t treat him like a volatile weapon that needed to be contained. She saw him, or at least he believed she did. She brought him movies and books, giving him the glimpses of the world outside his sterile prison. She was always—always—kind, always understanding. Even when he accidentally lasered six scientists in front of her, she hadn’t flinched. ”Accidents happen,” she said with a shrug, patting his head. Her smile was honey-sweet, her voice soothing, her heartbeat only slightly elevated—not panicked, not racing.
She was his anchor, the one person he could trust.
He had never thought of her in that way—not even when he discovered the awkward, fumbling thrill of self-pleasure. Not until she started guiding him there. Her touches, featherlight at first, grew more intimate with time. Her playful tone danced on the edge of innocence, daring him to question her intentions. She made him doubt, made him desire, all while keeping the reins in her hands.
He hadn’t been a child when they first had sex—just eighteen. But long before that, she’d prepared him. The first time she jerked him off, she didn’t let him reciprocate. Not even a kiss. It was always on her terms, always under her control. Then, shortly after his eighteenth birthday, she summoned him to her office. She called it his present. She told him to take off his pants.
The memory of what followed was fractured, as though his mind had deliberately blurred the edges. But he remembered the aftermath with painful clarity: the way he had sobbed into her lap, her hand stroking his hair as she whispered, Such a good boy. Such a good little boy.
That was the moment, he realized now, when his innocent love had curdled into something darker—a desperate need for her intimacy that filled him with both longing and shame. Over time, it became an obsession. A void he tried and failed to fill with other women. Not even Maeve, with all her beauty and power. Maeve, the closest thing he’d had to an equal. He had tried to love her, to want her, but it was never enough. She wasn’t Madelyn. No one was.
And that, of course, had been Madelyn’s intention all along. To keep him tethered. To keep him dependent. To keep him tame.
It marked a turning point in his relationship with his therapist. He no longer saw her as an antagonist or a potential love interest. In fact, he stopped seeing her as a person altogether. Instead, she became something else—a mirror, reflecting the hidden parts of himself he’d long avoided. A rail to grip as he descended the spiral staircase into the abyss of his mind. She wasn’t someone to engage with but a function, a voice he’d silenced for years, now given form and purpose.
And he believed that’s exactly what she wanted to be.
He told her—still slightly reluctant—about Ryan. About the regrets that clung to him. He hadn’t been the father he’d imagined. He thought giving his son the childhood he never had would be simple. After all, Ryan was his blood. The one person who could truly understand him. The only one who shared his immense power, who would never see him as a monster, never fear him, and never stop loving him. He believed he could guide Ryan, shape him into a better version of himself: a man with unshakable foundations—strong, unyielding, secure. Someone who would never crave love or approval. Someone pure.
But even in their best moments, before Ryan learned the truth about Rebecca and turned on him, they never truly connected. There was always a gap, an invisible chasm between them. Ryan was distant, polite but cautious, sometimes offering that disapproving side-eye he’d come to loathe. He never opened up, never shared, never invited him in. If John wanted love, he had to force his way through, demand it—again.
He’d tried to change, to be less controlling, sensing that his neediness might be driving Ryan away. But it made no difference. If anything, Ryan seemed relieved to be left alone, to have more time with Butcher. And that burned. What did they even talk about? What could they possibly have in common? Why did Ryan love Butcher and not him? What was there to love?
It was a painful question, one he hated examining. Too fresh, too raw. But he went there. The therapist suggested Ryan was drawn to the human side—something familiar, something that reminded him of his mother. It was absurd, of course. There was nothing admirable about being human. But even he had to admit it wasn’t entirely untrue. Ryan had always had a soft spot for humans. John had seen it from the start. And as much as he tried, he could never fix it.
He’d missed the first eight years of Ryan’s life—those critical years with Rebecca in that shack. Whatever she’d taught him during that time had been etched deep into his mind, shaping him in ways that couldn’t be undone. She’d ruined him. Warped his son’s wiring, just like the lab had warped his own.
And there was no fixing that. Ryan had become his own person, molded into something else. Something different. Was it better? Worse? He didn’t know anymore. All he knew was that Ryan was now something alien, someone he could no longer reach. No longer recognize. No longer control.
The therapist had suggested he write a letter to Ryan. At first, he laughed at the idea. Humiliate himself even further? No, thank you very much. Begging for love only to be rejected again? He’d had enough of that. Besides, what was the point if the letter would most likely go unread? But the therapist had insisted: the letter wasn’t for Ryan—it was for him. A way to confront his mistakes and take the first step toward letting them go. She’d even assured him he didn’t need to send it at all.
So, fine. Why not? He was bored and decided to give it a try.
What began as a silly exercise became his ultimate torment. He rewrote the fucking letter twelve times, and each draft felt like performing open-heart surgery on himself, bare-handed and without anesthesia. He dragged out everything hard, sharp, and toxic—all the thorns and traps he had accumulated over the years—until only what was soft and vulnerable remained. A battered mollusk, clinging to the jagged walls of its shattered shell.
As he wrote, the truth burned within him like a torch. By the time he set down the final period, its brilliance had blinded him. He wanted desperately to forget what he had written. To transfer the words from his mind to the page without leaving them etched in his memory. To sever those thoughts as though slicing away ruined frames from a reel of film. But the words clung to him, even after he sealed the envelope—a manifesto of his frailty.
He never told his therapist what he had done, and he wasn’t sure why, but he had signed the letter with a false name and sent it anyway.
Afterward, he couldn’t stop thinking about it.
He pictured his letter, crumpled among countless other envelopes, as a guard unlocked the door and dumped the pile into a sack.
He thought of the sorting centers, where it would be shuffled together with advertising flyers, bank statements, and tax notices before being tossed onto yet another truck bound for the local post office.
He imagined some disheveled mail carrier, trudging through the neighborhood with a bag slung over their shoulder, dropping it into the mailbox of Ryan's new home.
How many grimy hands would touch the envelope, indifferent to the sender’s identity? How many miles would it travel before, if ever, it reached Ryan’s hands? Perhaps it would never get there. The postal service was one of the most inefficient systems humanity had ever devised. Maybe it would get lost in transit, abandoned at some early stage. And all his carefully chosen words, painstakingly plucked from his soul, would rot—forgotten in a storage room, swept into a sewer, burned in a trash chute, fed to the fireplace of a retiree in Oregon.
Maybe.
And yet—he had sent it. And strangely, a part of him felt good about it.
That choice had unexpected consequences. Two months later, a guard told him he had a visitor—the first, apart from his lawyer, since he was trapped here. He already knew who it would be before stepping into the visitor’s room. Yet, even as he approached the glass partition, he was afraid to believe it.
It had been over a year since they last saw each other, two years since they’d truly spoken. Their reunion was a disaster—awkward, charged with unspoken tension. It felt like walking through a warehouse packed with explosives, each glance a potential spark. Every word, every pause, threatened to set off something volatile. It nearly did. More than once.
When the visit ended, John was certain Ryan wouldn’t return. Why would he subject himself to the meaningless torture of seeing him like this? Seeing him. But Ryan did come back. Once a month at first, then twice. Slowly, time began to work its quiet magic. The dust of old grievances settled, the sharp edges dulled, and the unbearable tension eased.
Now, their visits almost resemble something normal. They exchange jokes, talk about trivial things—baseball, food, music—and recently, even girls. He suspects Ryan might have a crush on someone, though the boy hasn’t admitted it yet. Occasionally, their conversations veer into more serious territory: the state of the world, morality, legacy. Those moments can get heated. In fact, they have argued. A lot.
He’s not proud of those arguments. Sometimes, an innocent comment from Ryan would spark something ugly inside him: envy, resentment, anger. He’d snap, feeling the familiar urge to dominate, to crush his son’s defiance. He always regretted it afterward. Deep down, he feared he was beyond repair—that no matter how hard he tried, he’d never become the man he wanted to be. Inside him lurked something wild and vicious, a part of him that resented the hand offering an apple through the bars.
Once, during a fit of rage, he shattered the prison phone, yelling until guards restrained him. He still remembers the look on Ryan’s face—hurt, confused, but stubborn—as the boy clutched the phone to his chest, mumbling something John couldn’t hear through the glass barrier. No superhuman hearing anymore, little shit, he’d thought bitterly, thanks to you.
That memory haunts him. It forced him to confront his worst fear: that he’d destroyed the only thing worth holding onto, the last shred of beauty in his world.
But even then, Ryan came back.
John had to admit, grudgingly at first, that his son was a better man than he had ever been. Ryan didn’t sulk or lash out. He didn’t hold grudges. He returned, steadfast and forgiving, refusing to wound him even when he deserved it. It might be seen as weakness, but he couldn’t help but admire it. Envy it, even. If Ryan had been more like him—proud, vengeful—their fragile connection would’ve shattered long ago. They would have hated each other. Maybe even destroyed each other. But Ryan wasn’t like him. There was a gentleness in him, a drive to forgive, to mend, to turn the other cheek. It wasn’t born of religious indoctrination but of something deeper. He knew that quality came from Ryan’s mother. And for the first time, he wondered if he’d been wrong about humanity all along. Maybe there was something worth saving in it.
Of course, Ryan wasn’t a saint. He was still a teenager, grappling with his own demons. Once, during an argument, he admitted to a recurring nightmare. In it, he was trapped in a Homelander costume he couldn’t remove. He described clawing at it, peeling it away piece by piece—only for his skin and organs to come with it, spilling out through gaping wounds. It was more than a dream. It was a visceral rejection, a desperate renunciation of the legacy he’d been forced to bear. Hearing it felt like a crushing weight on John's chest.
John didn’t apologize. He didn’t argue, shout, or try to comfort him. He simply placed the phone back on the receiver and walked away. When Ryan came for the next four visits, he stayed in his cell.
It was the longest February of his life.
But he couldn’t hide forever. In the end, he forgave. And, somehow, Ryan forgave, too.
Sometimes, during their visits, they don’t say much—perhaps because there’s too much to say. Once, Ryan mentioned visiting the lab where John had been raised. Ryan's eyes were different that day, distant yet searching. He apologized, though he had nothing to apologize for. Then, he placed a hand against the glass. It looked too fragile, like a wing pressed flat. John wanted to shield it, crush it, worship it—all at once.
He mirrored the gesture.
For a long time, neither spoke. The pane was cool, but the warmth beneath it felt almost real, a thin current he could nearly believe in. John’s hand ached—with the urge to pull the boy through, or never let him go.