costarring | INBOX

i was gonna tell you he's like opening a book and finding all the pages blank.
yeah, yeah, "that's what notebooks are," whatever. you know what i mean.
ask him about the surgical scar on his head sometime, see what he says.

[ . . .

she doesn’t love the sound of that. ]

what’d it look like to you?

some kind of brain surgery, if i had to guess.
he said he got discharged from the army thanks to an injury, but whatever it is, it's not that one.

a lot of people have surgeries.
why the sudden interest?

not ones that leave them at constant level zero.
just looking out for you, maeve. you know i care about you.

so you went and pissed all over a guy i got arrested.
gee, thanks.

woof, touchy. anyway, he should be so lucky.

just figured he must be a special guy if he's the one getting you over your whole lesbian phase.

[ 🙃 ]

it really bothered you that i said he was cute, didn’t it

are you too mad at me to help with one last sweep of the grounds, or can we find a way to make this work?

we'll always find a way. that's the magic of you and me, maeve.
thought you'd know that by now.

meet you out front?

[ he has a point. it was always going to come down to them — to her — since they started this fucked up journey together. it’s her fault for dragging it out, really. how could she ever think anyone was better off with him alive than dead, even in this hellhole?

maybe his weakened senses from the game will give her a fighting chance. and he’s stronger, sure, but she’s angrier. she can feel it, like electricity under her skin. ]

i guess no one else could understand what we’ve been through together.

be there soon.

[ of course she’ll be later than that. it’ll be an honour to piss him off one last time. ]

[ Text being what it is, it seems safe enough to assume he takes her agreement at face value — and maybe a part of him does. Either way, he's waiting for her by the time she makes her way out of the mansion, as he's always been when he's been made to wait, arms crossed over his chest and back leaned against the wall.

The game's been fun, in its own way. (Would've been more fun if people had taken it less seriously, considering the consequences, but, sure, the deaths have been kinda gruesome, so maybe the guests get a little leeway for acting like being accused is equivalent to having themselves and all their loved ones sentenced to death. Actually, no, they've still all been overreacting.) He's gotten to know some folks better, at least — gotten further proof of the confidence Alicent and Aemond have in him, gotten friendly with his team — which isn't nothing, even if most of them would be useless to him in any other context.

And then there's Maeve. It's been nice, really, getting back to their old crimefighting act. Nice enough to outweigh how annoying it's been to hunt for clues themselves. Almost like they're back to square one, like things are — not okay, maybe, but okay enough.

Which accounts for the pointed, ] If I'd realized you were in such a rush, I've have gotten here sooner, [ he drawls, as he hears her footsteps carrying her over the door's threshold. ]

We doing this or what?

[ Tonight, there’s a chill in the air, the first crisp touch of autumn nipping at every patch of exposed skin. Yet Maeve joins Homelander outside in only her uniform, metallic skirt rustling. She hasn’t worn it since she awoke in this place, even as the game progressed and its violence multiplied. The bulletproof, reflective weave would only matter if she faced one man, and she didn’t think him a wolf.

He’s something much worse.

As Maeve crosses the grounds, illuminated only by the moon and radiant light from the house, she shakes out her hair. A roll of her shoulders, and her muscles settle, the tension dissipating. It’s like the first time she jumped between buildings, twenty-something and terrified: You have to let go of the fear, or you’ll fall.

She flashes a smile, the most genuine one Homelander will have seen in some time, and claps a hand on his shoulder. ]

There’s nothing I’d like more, John.

[ His name the only warning for curled fist, wound and slugged into the top of skull, hard enough to shatter the metacarpals in her hand and the crown of his head — if either of them were human. ]

[ In the split second before her fist makes contact with his head, he looks at her with his eyes bright, unsuspecting, only the first traces of a frown beginning to form upon his features as he hears his given name—

—and then the blow hits, and he crumples backward, his psyche fracturing, each facet bearing a different thought. In one, total confusion. Why would she do this? (Somewhere further back in his brain, Did I do something wrong?) In another, rage, not at her, but at himself for being at all surprised. For being so fucking stupid and pathetic that he'd have his little feelings hurt by this. He'd known, hadn't he? Or at least, he'd suspected. In yet another, some strange, delirious kind of vindication. (From the start, I hated you. But what's more, I fucking pitied you. As if he needed her pity.)

All of it coalesces into a sort of barking laugh as he regains his balance, blinking the stars out of his eyes — once, twice — as whatever cognizance he'd once had about the limits of his powers struggles against the instinct to let loose, to fight as though they were completely unfettered. ]

I see how it is.

[ His lips curl back over his teeth, half-snarl, half-smile, and whatever attempt at making a peace offering he might have once considered goes flying out the window, propelled by his frustration with this game, this place, himself, as he aims a punch square at her gut. ]

[ There you are. The face she sees in her mind’s eye, her nightmares, the mirror of the elevator at Vought before she blanches. All teeth and jawbone, jutted out to wound her. Show them your face, a half-delirious thought. They’re the only ones out here, but everyone should know this is the man they befriended at his lowest. They wouldn’t like him any other way.

The air rushes out of her lungs, pain on a delay as she registers the hit, the crack of bone under the pressure. No one else could do that to her. Could hold in a vice grip and make her do his bidding for years on years.

God, she’s never hated anyone more. ]

Fuck — [ She rockets back into a nearby hedge, easing the impact of the inevitable fall and reflecting her momentum.

In seconds she bounces forward, knees bending. Her ribs smart (shit fuck shit, that’ll take time to heal) but she pushes through it. Arms raised to block, then, fists curled to swing — a feint. She ducks low, leg sweeping out to buckle him at the knees. ]

[ When he thinks back on this, later, he won't really understand why the memory is colored with something like happiness. Like the relief he'd felt when Stillwell had told the truth about how she felt about him. A cork popped out of a bottle, a curtain pulled back, nothing left now but to do what they've been trained to do their entire lives.

There's something strangely liberating about it, too, even as he starts to feel blackness creeping in at the edges of his vision. He doesn't have to pull his punches with her — not that he ever really has for anybody, but the point remains.

He falls for the feint (usually does, confident as he is in his ability to withstand practically any blow), his arms rising in turn as her leg catches him, sends him down to the ground with a grunt. It's an opening, however small, even as he makes it clear what he intends to do next, the icy blue of his eyes replaced by a burgeoning red glow. ]

[ Immediately, Maeve launches after him, knees bracketing his waist, thrust so hard into the ground that she indents the green beneath them. No time to cower or run, when she has a job to do do. She raises her arms to cover her face, bracelets poised to send Homelander’s laser vision refracting across the grounds.

A gamble, that he’ll aim there and not much lower. She can handle the burn for a couple seconds, long enough to shift her gauntlets into place. If it leaves a mark — it’ll be worth it. Anything would be, if she ends the night free for the first time in decades.

(She doesn’t bet on his senses or abilities being dulled as much as her anger burning brighter and fists swinging harder. All she needs in the half-second window when his eyes dull into good ol’ boy blue, and she’ll hit him until she can’t any longer.) ]

[ Even as his gaze bores — literally — into the cross of Maeve's wrists, there's some part of him that understands that this is futile; that he should be smarter about this, that the house's restrictions on him won't suddenly lift now. But he's never been the kind of person to accept what everyone else would know to be true, to follow anything but the path he's set out for himself.

Even as beams of red splinter against her armor, slashing furrows into the greenery around them, the set of his mouth twists into a grin as he starts to laugh, his fingers digging into her legs — to pierce the skin, to tear her apart, to wrench her off of him, despite the way he feels his strength begin to fail.

There's vindictiveness, and then there's the faint sense that they were always supposed to die like this, to die together. But there's something more primal that surges up through his gut, too — fear, as he realizes his vision is starting to go dark, as his hands lose their hold upon her. (The one thing that has ever tempered his loneliness is the knowledge of his strength. Without what, what is he?) His smile falters— ]

You fucking bitch.

[ —and then fades completely as his eyes roll back in his head and he goes limp, his skull falling back against the grass. ]

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cw homophobic language

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cw hints of gore, misogynist language