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Hey, Annie, it's me again.
I was just wondering, have you ever seen the music video for that Billy Joel song ‘You're Only Human?’ There's this kid, and he's climbing up a bridge, and he's gonna kill himself. But then Billy Joel steps out with his harmonica and tells him to stop. "You just have to wait for your second wind." And now I feel like I'm that kid... and I'm gonna drown and... And thank God I found my second wind, because it's you.
You're my second wind.
~~~
Hughie didn’t think he’d see her again so soon, let alone under such… romantic circumstances.
The maze of storm pipes stretches out around them. The tunnels rumble with channeled wind, hiding the shuffling of his teammates around the corner. He had no reason to hide, though. Not from her.
Annie, or Starlight, practically glows under the ventlights. An angel amid the squalor. Hughie, on the other hand, fits right in with the scenery. Dripping with whale guts and rainwater, he looks more like a tech salesman-sized sewer rat than a person.
Strangely, he finds himself more bashful about the rambly message he’d left for her that morning than the gore clinging to his clothes. It’s ridiculous, but… being around her makes him a little ridiculous. She has a way of bringing that out in him. The whimsy. The dry humor. And that little voice that sings along to pop rock radio in the car. The one that keeps him moving forward. He steps forward now.
“You got my message.”
Now in plain view, he gets a better look at her. He realizes that it’s not just the light from the grates above her making her glow. Her eyes burn yellow in the darkness, illuminating the haze around them. It’s very cool, and might’ve even been a little scary if he didn’t know her. But this wasn’t just some supe, just a member of the Seven. She wasn’t even just starlight, she was-
“Annie?” He repeats, but she’s not looking at him right. Her brow is twisted like she’s facing down a threat, and the glowing is starting to make her eyes look a little more alien than welcoming. He wonders if maybe she can’t recognize him past the shit on his face. He smiles in an attempt to cut through the tension. It comes across as mostly teeth.
“I-”
Before he can get out another word, he’s flying across the storm drain. His back slams against the wall and his thoughts short out. When they return, he notices he’s on his back. He hasn’t really processed what’s just happened when the pain catches up to him.
His chest, which bore the brunt of the blast, explodes with agony. It burns cold, like someone had poured scalding water on him in the middle of a snowstorm, or dunked his torso into a pit of raw nitrogen. What’s worse is that he knows this is her holding back. All the sudden, he’s watching her bowl again, asking why she’s so afraid of using her strength. Except this time, he’s not her competitor but the pins themselves, watching the ball barrel towards them.
He curls in on himself and wheezes, bargaining with the stale air in the tunnel to let him take in one more breath. He can’t really figure out what he’s done to warrant the sucker punch - but figures oxygen is a higher priority for now. He’s barely managed to wrangle a gasp into his lungs when a terribly familiar voice makes its way around the corner.
“Oh, come on. You gotta be fսcking kidding me. This guy? Again?”
Hughie chokes.
The voice goes on speaking, but he can’t wrap his head around the fact that Homelander’s here. He spares a horrified glance to the corner where he knows the boys are waiting, but they don’t make a sound. Whether Homelander hasn’t aimed his x-rays in their direction or doesn’t care to check, he hasn’t called them out yet. He’s focused enough on Starlight - and on him - that the group might still have a chance. He holds his breath and rides out the aftershocks of Starlight’s power as quietly as he can, even as his tongue goes numb and his hands begin to tremble. Over the beating of his heart, he hears Homelander’s scolding voice. The playful, sing-song condescension as he compels her to kill.
Annie’s resisting - still trying to protect him, but the hero has his hand on her back, scooching her forwards. A gentle threat. He positions her so she’s standing at point blank range from Hughie’s face. A rifle ready to fire.
“I'd like you to do something for me, okay?” His voice lilts, slow and deliberate. As if only hesitating because she’s too stupid to clock the command..
“Kill him.”
“He... He's wanted.” she stammers.
“Yes, he is.”
“Shouldn't we take him to the police?”
“Yes, we should.”
Homelander’s insistent.
Kill him. Right now.”
He’s goading, grin as wide as a skull, but Hughie’s starting to lose track of the specifics. Whether it’s a way of coping or his sanity starting to fray, he starts to hear the jaunty notes of ‘You’re only human’ in the back of his mind. There’s a dawning sense of finality yawning over him, ready to swallow him whole. He feels himself staring up into that black hole and wonders if it’s even worth it to try to pull back or to just drift, unhurried, into it.
Somewhere in the haze he looks across the storm drain to where a single beam from Annie’s hands has fallen astray. For a second, they illuminate Butcher’s face, drawn in uncertainty and horror. His eyes flick between Homelander and the shadows behind him where the others wait.
Hughie wants to hate him. He certainly thought he did a few hours ago, when he burst everyone’s bubble about V going public. But that hatred is beyond him now as he locks eyes with his captain.
He's certain he’s imagining things now, because for once, Butcher looks guilty.
“Kill him.” Homelander repeats. “Do it.”
When Annie wavers, his voice chills.
“More incentive? Okay. You kill him, or I'll fսcking kill you both.”
Hughie’s eyes snap back to Annie’s. She’s still hesitating, but he won’t have any of it. He’s gotten himself into this mess, but she has no right going down with him. Her purpose is so much greater than this. His was lost a long time ago. Splattered down a block and a half of Queen Street.
She’s still staring at him, eyes wide and fearful as a doe’s. For a moment, it’s like they’ve swapped places and she’s on the floor while he stands at Homelander’s side.
It hardly matters. They’re both trapped.
He nodes at her and hopes she’ll understand. Hopes she can feel his forgiveness even when he doesn’t have the breath to speak. She raises her hands. The chorus in his head kicks up as they grow brighter and the service lights start to flicker. He’s seconds away from shutting his eyes against the light when he suddenly sees Butcher step forward. His heart freezes in equal parts horror and terrible, terrible hope.
Horror, of course, that homelander might see him and incinerate him on sight. Hope that somehow, Butcher would find a way to distract him until they hatched some half-baked escape plan. Horror that Annie’s cover would be blown, but hope that she’d have others willing to stand with her. Horror that Butcher might put himself and the rest of the boys at risk, but hope that after everything they’d been through, he cared enough about Hughie to try.
He sees Butcher open his mouth, but it’s too little, too late. Over the shrill ring of Starlight's powers buzzing to life, Homelander doesn’t hear him and Annie doesn’t see him, and Hughie can’t say a word before brightness is all there is.
He braces himself for the pain, but it never comes. There’s a moment of weightlessness as he flies through the air, and then a crack. He can’t say for sure if it’s from the wall or his skull.
It doesn’t really matter, because all at once, the light is gone - and everything else is gone along with it.
…
…
…
There are flashes, after.
The pinch of a needle in his arm.
The feeling of skin and bone stitching itself together.
A screech so loud it couldn’t possibly be his own.
He doesn’t have time to comprehend how there even is an after before electricity sparks through his brain and pulls him down, down, down.
…
…
…
It seems like a millennium before anything pierces the darkness again - and yet like no time has passed at all.
Seconds ago, he was pressed up against a sewer wall, soaking in whale guts and rays of lethal light. Now, the hard thing at his back is a metal table and the lights above him are dim and warm. He shuts his eyes against them anyways.
He's soaking wet, but noticeably less disgusting than before - like someone had hastily dumped a bucket of water over him to clear away the worst of the gore. His jacket and shirt are gone too, leaving him damp and shivery in the lamplight. He tries to roll over, but somewhere between his brain and his spine, the intent gets lost in translation. His muscles tense in a violent, full-body twitch and the table rattles beneath him.
"Petit Hughie! He’s-”
"Careful! Don't touch 'im. You don't know what could happen-"
"Does it look like he's gonna have another seizure?"
The chatter bounces off his brain like marbles. They spill to the floor with the murky water dripping off the table. One of the voices draws closer.
“You with us?”
Hughie tries to open his mouth, but quickly learns that speaking is out of the question. His tongue feels like lead and the sharp tang of iron fills his mouth. Instead, he cracks his eyes open even though the dim lighting pierces into his skull. To his relief, the owner of the voice leans over him and blocks out the light. Once his eyes have adjusted, he makes out the face of a weary-looking black man, brow crinkled with concern. He tries to put the face to a name, but flounders.
His mind’s a box of puzzle pieces; all jumbled, with half the pieces upside-down. Odd flashes of memory serve only to confuse him further. Like a whale, for some reason. He shakes the image away, focusing again on the man helping him. Taking in his eyes, the fatherly voice. The word 'Milk' briefly comes to mind, but that must be a misplaced piece. What the hell kind of parent would name their kid Milk?
"That's ok,” the man continues, taking Hughie’s silence in stride. “Can you blink at us to let you know you can hear us? Move your hand?"
Hughie may not remember his name, but he knows this man. Knows he can trust him. So he tries to do as he says. With some effort, he manages a slow blink. His fingers twitch by his side.
"Good! Hugh- Hughie, that's good."
The man continues, talking him through each twitch of a finger or toe until the pieces connect enough to move. They don’t yet explain where he is, or who the voices around him belong to, or more importantly what he’s doing alive. As the milk-man checks over the rest of him, his gaze drifts to the side to where a shorter man and an asian woman stand sentry. He squints and all the sudden, another few pieces click. Frenchie. Kimiko. And - yes! - MM, who's name really is Mother's Milk. Unless he was messing with him when they first met, which… thinking about it now, he probably was. Not important.
Everyone’s staring at him like he might break, which he finds a little annoying considering he survived whatever the hell happened…before.
Trying to focus on the stretch of time between the sewer wall and now sends the puzzle pieces spinning once again. All he can see when he tries to look back is a bright, terrible light and a burning in his chest and all the sudden he’s there, staring up at Annie - no, starlight - as she seals his death warrant. Nothing can ground him as his thoughts slip from the present and back into that nightmare. The soft basement lighting fades until all he can see are those blinding, gold eyes - and Homelander’s Cheshire grin, half-shadowed behind her.
Frenchie’s shouting at him to breathe, ami! but he’s hyperventilating now, and can’t hear a word because Homelander’s here and he’s threatening them both and everything’s so bright and it’s all too much-
He places his hand by his side, hoping to push himself up. Someone’s telling him no, stay down- but he needs to escape; needs to get out of here before the heroes find and kill them all. His palm is pressing into the metal when his hand slips through the surface.
Not off it. Through it. His thoughts freeze.
He's staring at the end of his wrist, which seems to disappear straight through the table like the limb of a ghost. He blinks dumbly at the sight for a few moments before his thoughts catch up to him and he screams. It's only then that he notices the uncapped syringe on the counter beside him; specks of blue liquid dotting the metal. Compound V.
He wants to scream again, but there’s so little breath in his lungs that it peters out before it has a chance. The best he manages is a frightened sound in the back of his throat.
"Pet-Hughie! Ne panique pas, just breathe, yes?”
“Frenchie, you’re freakin’ him out!”
But their voices twist into another. One that was both lighter and more dangerous than them all. One that had begged and pleaded with Homelander not to make her do it. The sounds of the room fade to static. All he can hear is that voice, so warm and comforting that it burns. He tries to pull away but it keeps getting closer, and then there are nails are brushing against his arm, and it’s all too much just leave me alone –
There's a gasp as the solid feeling at his back disappears. In a moment, he's on the floor - staring up at the solid table he just fell straight through. The room is thrown into chaos.
"Agh- Putain de merde!- He cannot afford another tumble. Check his head, we do not want it cracking open again-”
"I'm trying, but he keeps phasin' through the stitches-"
Kimiko steps forward to pull him up, but Frenchie catches her arm before she can, and they devolve into a flurry of furious hand movements. Finally, a third voice cuts through the chaos.
"Christ! Frenchie, help MM move the table outta the way; we don't need him going tangible in a block of metal- and stop tryin' to touch ‘im! You’re scaring the daylights out of the lad.”
The prying hands draw back sharply at the command. There’s a moment of quiet, followed by swift action. Soon, the table’s screeching across the floor. Kimiko’s dragging it out of the way. He watches in morbid fascination as the structure passes through his limbs like a specter. He takes a trembling breath and opens his mouth. For once, the words come clearly.
“Wh- what did you do to me?”
No one makes a move to answer, but it’s clear the pieces have finally clicked. The sewer, the basement, the syringe. And of course,
“Butcher.” Hughie gasps. “Shit, he’s gonna-”
“Oi.”
His eyes snap to the far corner. There, as far back as the small room would allow, stands the source of the third voice. Butcher doesn’t look much like himself now, though. His signature trenchcoat is missing, and – despite the brave face he’s put on- it looks pale and drawn.
“Uh…” Is all Hughie can manage.
Butcher’s ambivalent towards supes on a good day, and there’s no way he didn’t see that little magic act he just pulled off. He’s not sure if he should try to run – or if he even can right now. His eyes flicker to the door.
"Stop shitting your britches. It was my idea."
Hughie blinks. He’s waiting for a joke, some hint of something more. Butcher glares through his eyebrows, but the two veins in his brow betray the emotion he's trying to keep out of his voice.
“What, you think I’d rather ‘ave you dead?” His voice cracks on the last syllable. “Things 'ad already gone to shit.” He recovers. “It was worth a try."
“How? The V, I thought…” Hughie trails off, losing track of the question.
“... that we’d given it away?” MM finishes, picking up the thought. “That reporter your girl gave the V to? She tracked 'em down. Said she needed to get it back to the lab before anybody noticed it was missing. Least she could do after, y’know."
Huhie could imagine. On top of Annie’s own guilt, Butcher had to have been murderous.
“After twinkle-toes scrambled your brain like an egg, ‘omelander had a good laugh.” Butcher continues. “…Don’t think the cunt was really expecting her to do it.”
“Not sure she was, either.” Frenchie adds humorlessly.
Hughie tries to imagine Annie's reaction after his head hit the wall. Her crumpling to the ground, lifting his bloody skull from the bricks. His... his body, hanging limply in her arms. He can’t really think much past that before his stomach starts to turn and he has to shut that cold brightness away once more.
“Anyway,” Butcher pulls him out of his head. “He seemed satisfied to leave her sobbin’ her eyes out and took off. Scared the shit outta her when we came out to raise hell. Told her the only way out was to fix it, and she agreed.”
“You were blubbering as much as her le capitaine.” Frenchie teases, but there’s no venom in it. Butcher glares at him, but the fire isn’t really in it either. The sense of relief saturates the room like a sedative.
MM nods. “I’m still mad as hell he lost track of you out there, but it was all hands on deck when the shit hit the fan. Hard to rip him a new one when he was the one who wrapped you up in that coat of his and carried you all the way back here.”
Hughie tries to imagine Butcher, crazed and furious - swaddling him like a baby. The image doesn’t really compute, but it serves to distract him enough that his shoes stop clipping through the floor.
“Look, we’re just-” Butcher steps forward, then back. Still wary about approaching him. “-glad you’re still knockin’ about, eh? We’ll deal with all the extra shit later.”
All the extra shit. He means… his powers. Which he has now. Because he’s a supe, isn’t he? There’s a reason Butcher won’t say that word aloud. It’s become so much more since their partnership. A word for the other side. A slur. It’s bizarre to think of it now as something Hughie is.
He looks up, and this time Butcher meets his eyes. They’re pained, but not empty. Not dark, the way he looks at Homelander or Translucent or even Annie. Hughie could only hope Billy knew him well enough to see the V didn't change who he was.
Uneasy with the loaded silence, Butcher claps his hands.
“Alright! Vought may have gotten a hit on us, but this doesn’t change our goal. We’ve got a win - thanks to our little reporter friend, and really, we have the upper hand on them now. A little advantage.”
The others shoot him perplexed looks. An advantage?
One of their teammates had nearly died, and their plan to turn in Kimiko’s brother had shit the bed when he flew the coop. They’d used up the last of their V, and Annie was MIA. Hughie can’t imagine what their leader has in mind. Butcher wasn't fazed by the blank looks.
“We’ve got someone on our team who Vought doesn’t know is alive" He whispered conspiratorially. "Someone who can fly under their radar completely.” Frenchie's eyes widen.
“Oui, someone who can get through their security without a hitch!”
“Not to mention their walls.” MM adds.
“Like a ghost.” Hughie breathes. Butcher’s eyes flash with something like grief, but it’s gone before Hughie can clock it.
"But!" Butcher interrupts. "...Only if you want to." He offers a hand, but doesn’t force it. Just waits for him to reach up.
Hughie glances questioningly at the others, but nobody speaks up. They all know the value of a chance like that. He looks back to Billy, and the small smile he finds there is genuine.
“You never asked to be here. I know you wanted payback for your girl, but… this all really started when that invisible cunt decided to tear you a new one. Now you’ve got a ticket out. It’s you choice, son.”
Hughie could leave now. No one would ever have to know. Find his dad, and quietly disappear off the face of the earth together. Any sane person in his position would take the out. But there's something about Billy he just can't shake. He's still got his old bravado. The same tilt in his brow; the same crazy schemes. But something has changed. He hasn't forced his hand. Somewhere along his runaway freight train route, he'd learned he'd really gone too far.
Hughie takes a breath and reaches up.
Their palms connect, and in the warmth of that embrace, he feels solid. Butcher pulls him up, and for the first time since the incident, he stands on his own two feet. He already feels more like himself. Frenchie moves to pull them in for a group hug, and Butcher doesn't even try to resist. Hughie stays sound in their arms.
They disconnect, and Butcher's all but replenished his leaderly spunk.
“So Vought gave us a ghost, did they?" He shoots them a crazed half-grin.
"Then let’s haunt the shit outta them.”