On Wings Of Lead

by vulcanbiscuit

Summary:

The world forgot him fast, but he remembers every scream, every spotlight, every lie they made him live.

The thick metal doors of the Seven’s meeting room slam shut with a violent ‘crack!’ one hinge splinters from the frame in his wake. The echo sounds down the hallway. Homelander storms away, his cape snapping behind him like a banner. People scatter as he walks forward, Vought interns, security, handlers; they all press themselves to the walls, avert their eyes, try to disappear into decorative plants. He punches the wall. Then another. Then another.

Concrete shatters. Drywall cracks. Photos fall off the walls. Blood colours the knuckles of the man who can’t be hurt.

His red boots hit the floor like thunder.

No one dares speak. No one dares breathe.

The keypad to his penthouse glows red under his thumb; he doesn’t wait. Homelander punches straight through the panel. Sparks explode. The door slides open on instinct, like it knows better than to argue. Some Vought men will come by to fix it later. The doors close behind him, slow and reluctant. The silence in the room is unbearable. The lights are too bright. The air is too still.

“Fucking cockroaches!” he growls, voice hoarse with rage, “All of them. Talking down to me like I’m some fucking… pet!”

He rips the television with his face on it off the wall, hurls it across the room; it sparks and dies midair, crashing into the floor by the windows with a glassy, final mess.

He grabs a chair and crushes it in his fists. Splinters rain down like confetti at a funeral, and it adds to the pile.

Then stillness.

Just for a moment.

His chest heaves. His jaw tightens. His eyes glow faintly red in the reflection of himself in the floor-to-ceiling windows.

The city below sprawls, unaware.

Ungrateful.

Small.

He stares out at it all, seething.

His lip curls. His breath fogs the glass as he steps up to it. His voice softens to something more deadly, “I could bring it all down. Right now… And not a single one of them could stop me.”

A muffled ding behind him; the elevator. Someone’s coming up. His head tilts, slow. Smile twitching on his lips.

The penthouse was suddenly quiet… but not the kind of quiet that came with peace. No, this was a charged silence, humming through the walls, pressing down on the lungs like the pressure before a storm.

Billy Butcher stepped through the elevator doors, a hand on Ryan’s back and Terror loping loyally at their side. The moment he crossed the threshold… he knew. It wasn’t the smashed keypad outside the door, or the warped steel panel still hissing sparks. It wasn’t the heavy tension hanging in the air, thick enough to taste.

It was the feeling in his bones.

Like something primal had stirred.

Ryan shifted beside him, chattering about a quiz or a story his friend told at lunch, Butcher wasn’t really listening anymore, but his little voice faltered when he saw the first piece of wreckage; a shattered chair leg with some blood staining the grain.

Butcher didn’t slow. He didn’t flinch. He kept his hand steady on Ryan’s back, eyes already scanning the room.

Cracks in the walls. Shattered glass. The TV…. gone. Crushed.

“Go on,” Butcher said quietly, leaning down and giving Ryan a gentle nudge forward, “Take your bag to your room, yeah? Unpack. And take the mutt with you.”

Ryan didn’t move at first. He looked up, worry pinching his face, “Is Dad okay?” he asked, small voice barely carrying in the massive, wrecked suite.

Butcher gave him a small smile; one of those soft, practiced ones.

The ones he reserved for when Ryan needed a little more steel in his heart than his young body could carry.

“I’ll make sure he’s alright, mate.”

Ryan lingered, torn, until Terror gave a quiet whine and nudged him toward the hallway like he knew Butcher’s instructions. Then the boy obeyed, slow steps fading into the distance. Only when they were gone, out of earshot, out of the blast radius, did Butcher let the smile drop.

He turned toward the center of the destruction, toward the tall, silent figure standing at the window with his back turned.

Homelander.

He stood still, glowing eyes fixed on the city below, his fists bloodied and trembling at his sides. Butcher could feel the rage rolling off him, like standing too close to a wild animal unleashed. Something had set him off. Bad.

“What happened, love?” Butcher asked flatly, voice cutting through the silence. Homelander didn’t turn. Didn’t move. Butcher just watched.

For a long moment, the Supe just stood there, the American cape draped over one shoulder, stained at the hem from the mess he’d made. Then—

“Vought,” he said finally. Voice dead. Low. He spat the word like it was poison.

Butcher took a slow step forward, stepping over a cracked picture frame; one of them all together, smiling. Summer trip. Some lake. Ryan’s arms slung around both their shoulders. Glass crunched beneath his untied boots.

“And this is your idea of takin’ it well, is it?” He asks, picking the picture up and putting it on the table.

Homelander turned then. Slowly. His face was twisted into something not entirely human; eyes red-rimmed, jaw clenched so tightly it looked liable to snap, “They forget who I am,” he snarled, “They think I’m their puppet. A fucking mascot with a flag and a smile. They forget who made them.”

Butcher didn’t flinch. He looked him dead in the eye, “I don’t give a shite what they think. I care about him,” he said, jerking his chin toward the hallway where Ryan had disappeared, “So if you’re about to go thermonuclear, I need to know.”

The silence that followed was heavy. Ticking.

Then Homelander exhaled, long and slow. His shoulders dropped just slightly. The red glow in his eyes dimmed, “…He saw the chair,” he muttered.

“Yeah,” Butcher said quietly, “He did.”

Homelander’s gaze fell to the blood on his knuckles, smeared and drying, “Did I scare him?”

Butcher didn’t answer right away. When he did, his voice was low, “He was more scared you were hurt.”

Homelander blinked. Then again. The fury drained out of his posture like a deflating balloon. All at once, he looked exhausted, “God,” he whispered, “I didn’t mean to—”

“Don’t let him think his old man’s the monster they say he is.”

Homelander swallowed, throat tight. Jaw trembling. He stepped forward like a man staggering out of a war zone; shaky, uneven, barely holding himself together. The adrenaline was gone, the rage had bled out through his knuckles and screams. What was left was something smaller. Rawer. Something afraid to break but already breaking.

He reached Butcher and collapsed into him; no bravado, no pride, no posing. Just a man falling apart. Butcher caught him, strong arms wrapping around his waist, his shoulders. He held him tight and steady, like he was the only thing keeping Homelander upright. Like if he let go, the supe might shatter into pieces too small to put back together.

“It’s alright,” Butcher whispered, voice warm and thick with something that sounded a lot like love. He pressed his cheek against Homelander’s temple, could smell the blueberry shampoo in his styled hair, “It’s alright now.”

Homelander clung to him, fists twisting into the back of Butcher’s trenchcoat.

“I’m done,” he whispered, “You’re right. You’ve always been right. And I’m done. I’m done.”

Butcher froze; not in fear, but in confusion. The words landed wrong. Too final. Too empty. Odd. He pulled back just enough to see Homelander’s face.

His eyes weren’t glowing anymore.

They were bloodshot, damp, heavy-lidded.

Exhausted.

Not with fury… but with grief.

Tears clung to his dark lashes, and Butcher lifted a hand and wiped them away gently with the pad of his thumb, brushing under each eye like it was second nature to care for the most dangerous man on the planet, “What do you mean, done?” he asked, quiet, careful.

Homelander didn’t answer right away. He just leaned into the touch, eyes closing like it hurt to be seen like this, “I can’t fight them anymore. Not like this. Not if it means becoming… becoming what they always said I was.” His voice cracked, “I scared him, William. I’ve seen it in his face before, and I don’t like it.”

Butcher’s chest pulled tight.

Homelander looked up at him, trembling again, “I’d rather lose everything than lose him. Or you. I’ll burn my name off every Vought product if that’s what it takes. I —... I just don’t care anymore.”

The truth sat heavy on his tongue. In the air.

Butcher cupped the back of his neck, pulling him forward again, holding him tight, “Alright,” he whispered again, steady and sure, “Then we do it together. We walk away from the whole bloody lot of it. You, me, and Ryan.”

Homelander nodded against him, breath hitching, as the tears came freely now; quiet, exhausted, human. For the first time he didn’t feel like a god or a weapon or a brand.

Homelander’s breath caught in his throat, chest still heaving as he stared up into Butcher’s face. His hands fisted the fabric of Butcher’s lapels, desperate not for control; but for something real, something safe. His eyes were wide, glassy and broken open, every mask he’d ever worn now lying in pieces across the penthouse floor, “Get me out of here,” he said. Voice hoarse. Barely more than a whisper.

Butcher searched his face, the blue in those eyes so vivid, so storm-tossed and exposed it nearly gutted him, “Where do you want to go?” he asked gently.

Homelander blinked, slowly. His lashes were wet. He looked around the room, at the wreckage, the ruin, the place that had been built to worship him but had become a gilded prison. His eyes came back to Butcher’s, “…Anywhere,” he said, “Just… not here. Not this.”

The words hit hard.

Not the penthouse.

Not Vought.

Not the goddamn brand.

Finally.

Butcher exhaled, nodding once. No questions. No judgment. No ‘told ya so.’ He rested a hand on the side of Homelander’s cheek, firm and warm, kissed his lips, “…Alright. Then we go.”

Homelander didn’t move at first; still trembling, still half-waiting for someone to stop him, for some invisible leash to yank him back. Vought.

He just leaned his head on Butcher’s shoulder.

Homelander broke down.

He buried his face into Butcher’s chest, clutching at his shirt like a drowning man clings to driftwood. His shoulders shook, silent at first, until the sobs found their voice, ragged, raw things that sounded too small for someone the world once called a god. Butcher said nothing. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t pull away.

He just held him, steady and solid, one hand cradling the back of Homelander’s head, the other wrapped around his back, his thumb stroking gentle, grounding lines over the cape. The tears came hard, so many years of confusion, of fear, of never being enough or being too much, of being loved for the wrong things and hated for the right ones. They soaked into Butcher’s Hawaiian shirt, hot and defeated.

No cameras.

No handlers.

No fucking expectations.

Just him and Billy Butcher.

Butcher let him fall apart.

Let him cry.

Let him be human.

Time passed; slow, quiet minutes where everything else in the world fell away; when the sobs began to fade, when the tremble in his hands eased and his breathing slowed, Homelander pulled back just a little.

His eyes were swollen, red-rimmed, lashes wet. He looked wrecked, but clearer somehow. Like something inside him had finally stopped screaming.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, voice frayed, “For all of it. You were right… always right.”

Butcher didn’t say “you’re forgiven.” He didn’t have to. A part of him didn’t want to because deep beneath the quiet, beneath the tenderness of holding Homelander like a man instead of a monster, there was still that coiled, venomous thing inside him. The old hate. The unhealed wound.

Homelander and Vought had taken everything from him.

Becca.

His life.

His peace.

His bloody sense of self. Even now, even after all this time, Butcher hadn’t grown past it.

Not really.

The grief still clawed at his ribs when he wasn’t looking.

The rage still flared up in the quiet hours, whispering things he’d buried and sworn off.

Even now, with Homelander trembling in his arms, broken, stripped down to the bone, Butcher felt that old instinct surge.

He could shove him away. Spit in his face. Call him the name he used to bite out like a curse. Monster.
He could tear him down all over again and walk away with his boots dry… But he didn’t.

Because Ryan was down the hall.

Because the man in his arms was weeping, not flying. Not killing.

Because something else, something older, had taken root since the last time he tried to destroy him.

Love, maybe.

Or something like it.

So he didn’t offer forgiveness.

He didn’t play god or priest, but he didn’t let go either. He held Homelander tighter.

Let him grieve.

Let him break.

He had made a silent promise when he fell in love with him; not to forget, not to absolve, but to stand beside him anyway… Because some things couldn’t be fixed, just some things could be carried.

So he just lifted his hand, rough and warm, and wiped the last of the tears off Homelander’s cheek with his thumb, “You alright now?”

Homelander nodded quietly, the motion small, almost uncertain. The weight of everything still clung to him like smoke, like ash from a fire that hadn’t fully gone out. He pulled in a breath, held it, and turned away from Butcher.

His boots moved slow across the floor, heavy and cautious, carrying him down the hall toward Ryan’s room. The light under the door glowed warm. Safe. He stopped there, hand poised but not knocking. He didn’t reach for the handle.

He just waited.

Waited to be noticed.

To be seen.

To be …welcomed.

Inside, Ryan sat cross-legged on his bed, unpacking a school folder with painstaking care. Crayon drawings. A spelling test with a gold star. The quiet clutter of an ordinary childhood, one Homelander had only ever seen from a distance.

When Ryan finally looked up and saw him, his eyes widened; not with fear. With something closer to concern, “Dad?”

Homelander’s breath caught in his throat, “…Hey, buddy,” he said, voice rough and small.

Ryan was off the bed in a heartbeat, arms flung around Homelander’s waist, burying his face in the blue suit, “You scared me,” Ryan mumbled into his chest, “Are you okay?”

Homelander didn’t answer right away.

His hands hovered for a moment before resting gently on Ryan’s back.

Then came the growl.

Terror, watching from his place on the rug, bared his teeth and gave a low, grumbling warning.

Homelander scowled, his lip curling. Without looking, he shoved the dog aside with one foot; not cruel, just dismissive. Like brushing away a gnat, “Stupid mutt,” he sighed.

Terror huffed and slunk off to the corner, but didn’t take his eyes off him.

Homelander stepped into the room and sat on the edge of Ryan’s bed.

It creaked beneath him, too small for the myth that usually hovered ten feet above the world.

He looked around at the posters on the wall, the backpack on the floor, the blue comforter with cartoon rockets and planets.

Then he looked at his boy.

Ryan stood in front of him, eyes still searching his face.

Homelander reached out, one hand brushing back Ryan’s blonde hair like he was made of something fragile and precious, “I don’t want to scare you again,” he said softly, “Ever.”

Ryan didn’t say anything at first. Then he crawled up beside him on the bed and leaned against his side, “You won’t,” he said simply. Like it was already decided.

Homelander let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding.

His hand rested on Ryan’s shoulder.

Just feeling him there.

Warm.

Alive.

Trusting.

For a flicker of a moment, it was enough.

Not the adoration of the world.

Not the spotlight.

Not the power.

Just this.

His boy beside him.

A second chance he never thought he’d get.

Then, Homelander’s voice changed. Gone was the fragile quiver from the wreckage and the tears; this was his voice again. The one that filled rooms. The one people obeyed. Strong. Calm. Assured. The kind of voice a boy could believe in, if only because it didn’t leave room for doubt, “I need you to do something for me,” he said, looking Ryan straight in the eye, “Okay?”

Ryan sat up straighter, sensing the shift, trying to understand, he nodded, “Okay.”

Homelander rested a hand on his shoulder, “Pack your things,” he said firmly, “Clothes, books, computer—whatever you don’t want to leave behind.”

Ryan blinked, confused, “Leave behind?”

Homelander hesitated just a beat; long enough for the father in him to catch up to the soldier, the weapon, the man who had just stormed out of a life built on control.

“We’re going somewhere,” he said, and his voice softened, not weak, just quieter. Lower, like he was letting Ryan in on something secret, “Away from Vought.” He searched Ryan’s face, trying to read the fear, the hesitation, the hope, “Like your mom wanted,” he added, “You remember that, don’t you? How she always said she didn’t want you growing up in all this? The cameras. The expectations. …The lies.”

Ryan nodded slowly, brows drawn together, “Well… Yeah… she said they’d turn me into something I’m not.”

Homelander smiled, just a little. It was crooked. Earnest. Tired. He wished he had a mom who cared for him too, “She was right.”

He looked around the room again, his boy’s room, safe for now, but not safe forever, “They don’t own us,” he said, “Not me. Not you. Not anymore.”

Ryan chewed his lip, still unsure, but not afraid, “Is Billy coming too?”

Homelander gave a short breath through his nose, half a laugh, half a sigh, “Yeah,” he said, after a moment, “He is.”

Ryan relaxed.

Homelander squeezed his shoulder again, gentle this time, “So go on. Take what matters. We’re leaving before they even know we’re gone.”

Ryan nodded, something sparking in his eyes now, not fear. Not confusion, just trust. He got up and started packing. Homelander just sat there a moment longer, watching his son fold shirts into a backpack, tuck away a drawing, slide his tablet into a sleeve. He stood slowly, his hand smoothing the bedspread with a kind of absent, fatherly care; an unconscious gesture that clung to the edges of who he wanted to be. Then he turned, leaving Ryan to pack, and went to find Butcher.

He found him in the living room, leaning against the counter with a half-finished bottle of water and the tired weight of someone who’d just survived a war he hadn’t meant to fight. Butcher looked up the moment he entered, eyes flicking over him like he was checking for damage.

“Jersey?” Butcher asked.

Homelander let out a breath; half scoff, half sigh, “Christ, anywhere’s better than here,” his voice dimmed as he kept talking, the steel softening at the edges, “…But it’s gotta be farther. Somewhere quieter. Some place where no one knows me. No cameras, no billboards, no bloody dolls of me, no shirts of my face,” He rubbed a hand through his golden hair, almost irritated with it, “I want to go somewhere they don’t care. Somewhere… fame didn’t poison. I want to start from zero. Build something real this time.”

Butcher stepped closer, his eyes warm but keen, like he saw everything Homelander wasn’t saying. He reached up and played with a lock of his hair, twisting it gently between his fingers. Then he leaned in and pressed a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth, “Dye it black,” Butcher suggested, lips brushing against his cheek, “Grow some fuckin’ scruff. Stop starin’ people in the eyes like you’re about to laser ‘em. You’d be surprised what folks don’t recognize even when it’s right in front of their faces.”

Homelander blinked at him, the edges of a smile tugging at his mouth, incredulous, “That some CIA shit?”

Butcher smirked, dragging his fingers down the back of Homelander’s neck in a lazy, affectionate stroke, “Yeah, Johnny,” he said, “That’s some CIA shit.”

Homelander looked at him, really looked at him, and for a moment, he thinks Billy Butcher knows there wasn’t a god or a soldier or a symbol standing there in front of him anymore. Just a man who wanted to disappear with the two people he loved most, and start again.

They walked hand in hand, the silence between them now warm instead of heavy. Butcher’s thumb stroked slow across the back of Homelander’s bare hand, grounding him in something that felt almost like the start of true peace. When they stepped into the bedroom area, Butcher let go gently and moved to his side of the closet. He started pulling out a few things, shirts, jeans, a weathered jacket he hadn’t worn in years but couldn’t bear to leave behind.

Practical. Quiet. Lived-in.

Homelander just stood there.

Still.

His boots hit the marble floors as he looked around the room. The gleaming floors. The glass walls. The closet full of carefully tailored suits, flag capes, gold-stitched emblems. His name and likeness stamped on everything from cufflinks to cologne, blueberry shampoo and red apple toothpaste…. And he realized, all at once: There was nothing here he wanted to take.

Not a single thing.

Not the uniforms. Not the trophies. Not the medals Vought handed him for crimes they helped write. Not the broken mirror that only ever showed him what and who he was supposed to be. Not the bed that had his thousand-thread-count sheets and no warmth.

His shoulders dropped a little.

Butcher turned, stuffing a pair of socks into his duffel, and caught the look on his face, “You alright?”

Homelander didn’t answer right away. He stepped toward the closet, stared into it like it was a museum of someone else’s life. Then: “There’s nothing here for me,” he said, quiet, “None of this means anything,” he picked up a suit off the hanger, blood red and American blue, the kind the whole world knew him by, and let it fall from his fingers. It slumped to the ground like a shed skin, “This wasn’t mine. It was never mine. Just something they built around me to keep me… in line.”

Butcher watched him for a beat, then walked over and slid his hand up Homelander’s back, warm and solid, “Then leave it,” he said, “Let it fucking rot.”

Homelander looked at him, eyes glassy but clear. Nodded. So just like that, he turned away from the past that had dressed him, fed him, shaped him.

No suit.

No cape.

No keepsakes.

Just Billy Butcher.

Just Ryan.

Just the man he was still trying to become.

Butcher watched him standing there, still, lost, staring at a pair of old red hero gloves on the floor like they were holy relics.

They weren’t.

Just fabric.

Just theater.

Just one more layer between him and the world, between him and anyone who ever tried to touch him.

Vought. Civilians with dirty hands.

“We’ll make something up, make a new you for you,” Butcher said gently, like it made perfect sense, like Homelander should just know what he meant, except he didn’t move. He looked down at the gloves, thick leather, polished, sterile, and felt sick.

Those gloves had crushed bones, held up buildings, kept people away.

They weren’t protection.

They were distance.

He turned to Butcher slowly, brows drawn, the sharp line of his square jaw clenched with something between uncertainty and grief.

“…What?” Finally came, softer than his face was letting on.

Butcher didn’t waste time explaining it like a metaphor or therapy. He just dug around in his bag, pulled out a muted gray shirt, soft with age, and a pair of simple pants. He handed them over like it was obvious.

“We’ll build you a new wardrobe, for starters,” he said, smirking a little, “After you change your hair, and we figure out who you fucking are under the suit, figure out what you like besides the Americana.”

Homelander looked down at the clothes in his hands, then up at Butcher with a blink, baffled and weirdly… lost? “My hair’s always been this way, he said it like he was realizing it for the first time. Like he was looking in a mirror without knowing who was staring back.

He thumbed at a strand of golden hair absently, like it didn’t belong to him, “…I guess I hate that too.”

Butcher stepped closer, close enough to whisper against his ear, the edge of affection in his voice cutting through the wreckage of doubt, “Good,” he said, “means you’re ready,” he pressed a kiss into the side of Homelander’s head; right into the gold… it wouldn’t be there much longer.

Homelander stepped back from Butcher’s touch, just a little. Not to push him away, but to face something harder.

The mirror.

He turned to it, boots silent on the marble, and stared at the man who had stared back at him his whole life. Golden hair, precise and gleaming. Gorgeous soft brunette lowlights.

Smooth skin, not a line or blemish in sight.

The jawline, the posture, the sculpted myth Vought had molded and polished until there was nothing left but a symbol.

He lifted a hand and touched his hair, fingered the strands like they were foreign, like they might dissolve in his grip. Then, lower, he poked lightly at the stubble-free smoothness of his jaw, imagining it with shadow, with imperfection. With realness.

He swallowed hard.

Like it hurt to imagine himself without the armour of image. Like he wasn’t sure there was anything under it.

Butcher watched him quietly from across the room. Not moving, not pressing… just watching. Noticing the shift in his shoulders. The tremble in his hands. The fear curling at the corners of his mouth.

Then Homelander spoke, “Would you still find me attractive?” he asked, voice cracking under the weight of it, “If I wasn’t… perfect?”

He didn’t look away from the mirror. Couldn’t. He needed to see the answer in the reflection; needed to believe it could be true.

Butcher’s voice was soft, but steady, “…Johnny.”

That name.

That real name.

Not a brand. Not a weapon.

Just a …man. Homelander isn’t sure which is worse.

He finally turned to look at him.

Butcher crossed the space between them, slow but sure, and cupped his cheek again, bare, imperfect, human; and tilted his chin up gently, “You think I loved you ‘cause of the fucking bleach blonde hair and the baby-smooth skin?” he asked, with a crooked, almost amused smirk.

Homelander didn’t answer. He looked down, ashamed of what he could be outside of blonde and blue-eyed.

Butcher’s thumb brushed just so faintly, “I love you in spite of all that shite,” he whispered, “I love you because you’re trying. Because under all that pomp and faux-shine, there’s a bloke who wants to be more than what they made him into.”

Homelander blinked, breath trembling.

“You wouldn’t be perfect,” Butcher added, smiling faintly, “You’d be better,” he kissed him; slow, firm, loving, like he meant it, like he wasn’t kissing Homelander the Supe or the god, but Johnny, the man beneath all the noise.

The man learning how to begin again.

He watched him, watched the way his lashes stayed low, his gaze ducked, like he couldn’t fully receive what had just been offered.

“Johnny,” Butcher, voice low and even, serious now, “You’ve got nothing to prove to anyone anymore. Not Vought. Not the public. Not the goddamn world,” he pressed his forehead lightly against Homelander’s, like he could will the truth into him by touch alone, “You’re perfect. You always were, always will be.”

Homelander flinched at the word.

His mouth twisted, skeptical, eyes still cast toward the floor.

He gave a small shake of the head, like the words didn’t fit, like they were too good to hold.

Butcher didn’t push…. But he watched.

Really watched.

Homelander stood there, suitless, barefoot as he changed out of his hero uniform, his image, his everything and became human—Butcher saw it clearer than ever. The god was gone.

The weapon was quiet.

What remained was something malleable, unfinished, still reaching for shape.

A blank slate.

A man stripped down to the bones and unsure what to build in their place.

Butcher… Butcher looked at him, standing in the wreckage of his old self, and for a long moment, didn’t see the enemy. Didn’t see the man who’d once taken everything from him.

He saw possibility.

He could shape him now.

Into anything.

Butcher’s eyes lingered on him, quiet and unreadable.

It felt like power of a different kind.

One that came with choosing what to keep, and what to finally let burn.

Homelander stood stiff in front of the mirror, tugging at the collar of a plain shirt like it itched, like it might smother him. The jeans were worse… too civilian, too normal, clinging to his thighs in a way that made him feel grotesquely visible. Human.

His hands fidgeted like they didn’t belong to him. He looked at his reflection like it was someone else: a stranger who’d never flown, never killed, never grinned through a PR nightmare with blood on his boots.

He spoke without turning around, “William… How are we getting out of here?”

Butcher didn’t look up from lacing his boots. He’d already stripped the room of anything trackable: phones smashed, hard drives fried in the kitchen sink, the built-in surveillance blind-spotted and fed a quiet, empty loop, “I’ve got a plan,” he said simply.

Homelander turned halfway, brow twitching, “You got a plan? Since when?”

Butcher stood, slinging a pack over his shoulder, eyes hard, precise, “Since day one.”

He tapped his temple with two fingers, “Knew someday we’d need to disappear. You. Me. Ryan. Knew they’d never let you go clean. Vought don’t retire Supes… they fucking bury ’em.”

He crossed the room, every movement efficient.

Measured.

Lethal.

“I’ve been bleeding intel out of this fucking place since the first time they let me through the door. Quiet. Piece by piece. Found every blind spot. Every weak hallway. Every ghost floor with a dead camera feed,” he grinned, sharp and bitter, “and… now… Now they’re watching nothing.”

Homelander stepped back, unnerved; not by Butcher’s words, but by how easily they rolled off his tongue. Like he’d planned to gut the system from the inside all along.

“Ryan’s already got a pack. He goes first. Then you. I’ll bring up the rear.”

“On foot?” Homelander asked, almost incredulous.

Butcher glanced at him, eyes gleaming, “we vanish into the cracks. Like smoke. They can’t trace what they can’t fuckin’ see. No powers. No fucking explosions. Just three nobodies walking out the damn back door.”

Homelander turned back to the mirror. The shirt. The jeans. The man with no cape, no boots, no American anthem playing behind him.

It was everything he’d been taught to fear: anonymity… maybe it was freedom.

“You sure this works?” he asked, voice lower now, more uncertain.

Butcher stepped up behind him, close enough that Homelander could feel his breath at his ear, “…It already has.”

When Homelander met his eyes in the mirror, there was something cold and certain in Butcher’s gaze.

He hadn’t just planned to save Homelander.

He’d planned to steal him.

“…Have my accounts drained?” Homelander asked, still staring out the window, his arms crossed tight over the shirt he hadn’t even finished tugging the tags off of.

Butcher didn’t miss a beat. He glanced down at his phone, a crooked grin cutting across his face as a secure message flashed across the screen, “Boys are on it,” he muttered, tapping out a reply with the kind of ease that said this wasn’t the first time he’d pulled something like this, “Money’ll be off-shore by the time we make it to the car. Names scrubbed… Digital ghosts.”

Homelander turned slightly, jaw twitching. A hundred questions brewed behind his eyes: how, when, why, how deep this web of Butcher’s really went… but none of them made it out. He knew he should be alarmed.
Knew it should scare him that Butcher had contingencies like this tucked away.

That he’d flipped his entire world off like a switch and rewired it for escape without blinking.

Instead… he just felt relieved.

The weight of it all, Vought, the Seven, the nonstop scrutiny of being “America’s Hero” …it was peeling off his skin like dead layers, and Butcher, cold bastard that he was, had come ready with the knife to strip the rest.

“You’ve really had this planned a long time,” Homelander said, quieter now, a thread of awe buried beneath the words.

Butcher didn’t look up from his screen, “’Course I have. I’ve always known the day’d come where we either run… or burn…” He slid the phone back into his jacket and met Homelander’s gaze with something that wasn’t pity, but something close, “lucky for you, Johnny… I chose run.”

Homelander sighed, deep and low, the kind that came from the center of his ribs and rattled against something broken inside. His eyes flicked to Butcher, skeptical and tired, a thousand questions behind them he didn’t have the strength to voice. How long had Butcher been waiting for this moment… Was he a part of the escape or just another piece being moved? Before the doubt could fester too long, the soft shuffle of sneakers pulled his gaze to the hallway.

Ryan appeared, clutching a small suitcase in one hand and gripping Terror’s leash in the other. The boy’s backpack was too big for him, slipping off one shoulder as he stepped into the room. His eyes were wide, not afraid, not excited, just quietly bracing. Like he knew the world was about to change again.

Homelander’s chest tightened. Ryan looked at him with a quiet sort of trust he knew he didn’t deserve.

Still, Homelander reached out and took his son’s small hand in his own. The leather handle of the suitcase bumped against his boot as Ryan stepped close. Terror gave a small huff and sat at Ryan’s side, ears twitching, watching everything with that blunt bulldog stillness.

“Let’s go,” Homelander said, voice steady now.

Butcher grabbed the last of the bags, checked his watch, then the security feed… still looping clean.

They walked out without ceremony.

No cape, no applause.

Just two men and a boy slipping into the dark, before the storm remembered where to look.

The bags hit the trunk with a heavy thud, muffled by the soft groan of old shocks. The ’87 Cadillac Brougham looked like it had seen a few getaways before… long body, black as a funeral procession, chrome flashing like a knife when the city lights kissed it just right.

Terror leapt into the back seat without command, curling up behind Ryan like this wasn’t the end of the world.

Butcher slid into the driver’s seat like a man slipping into a role he never really left.

Homelander took the passenger side slow, hands to his face before the door even shut. He didn’t speak. Not yet. The door clicked. The engine grumbled to life.

They pulled away in silence, a ghost ship moving through the undercurrent of the city.

Neon signs flickered past like dying stars.

Streetlamps cast long, accusing shadows across the dashboard.

It didn’t take long to hit the edge of town, but the drive dragged.

The car was slow.

….Obnoxiously civilian, and Butcher drove slow. Not to cause alarm. Just another normal day.

Flying would’ve taken seconds.

Homelander rubbed his hands over his face, palms dragging down until they caught on the edge of his jaw.

His breath fogged the window.

He stared out at the skyline receding in the rearview, swallowed by the dark like it never existed.

Vought Tower disappeared.

His chest was tight.

Too tight.

Was he having a panic attack?…

The kind of tight that told him something precious was being ripped out.

He may never fly again.

The thought slammed into him like a bullet. Not the loss of power; he still had that… But what was the point? Flying was freedom.

Flying was how he moved above it all.

Flying was who he was.

…And now…

Now he sat in a rusting car, rolling through the gutter of the world like a rat on the run.

He wasn’t the only man in the sky anymore.

His fists clenched in his lap.

He looked down at them.

No gloves.

No cape.

….Just skin.

“Fuck,” he whispered, not loud enough for the kid in the back to hear. Not loud enough to stop the panic crawling up his throat.

Butcher kept his eyes on the road, but he felt it, sensed it like a shift in weather. He didn’t say anything. Just reached for the radio and turned it up, static melting into low jazz, his hand on the supe’s knee.

The Cadillac rolled on.

No destination.

No turning back.

Just a god and his family learning how to fall.

Homelander stared out the passenger window, forehead leaning against the cold glass as the last jagged edge of the skyline disappeared behind them. The city shrank in the rearview like a dying fire; one last flicker of gold before the dark swallowed it whole.

No more towering steel monuments bearing his name.

No more billboards.

No more cameras.

It was gone.

So… for the first time in his life, no one would be watching.

The highway stretched ahead in endless black, painted lines humming beneath the tires like a lullaby for ghosts.

Fields replaced buildings.

Silence replaced applause.

He tried to picture life like this… civilian life.

Waking up without cameras flashing outside the penthouse.

Wearing clothes bought off some rack, wrinkled and dull…

Shopping for groceries.

Paying for gas.

Lining up behind people who didn’t know his name.

It sounded like nothing.

A long, slow crawl toward irrelevance.

Obscurity dressed in denim.

‘Is this what they wanted for me?…’ he thought, ‘What she wanted for Ryan?’

No legacy.

No power.

Just bland little mornings and soft-voiced goodnights.

He wasn’t made for that…

He was a nuclear warhead dressed as a man.

He wasn’t supposed to wait in line.

He wasn’t supposed to fade.

The thought of it… it turned his stomach.

It made his skin itch.

It made his teeth grit.

And yet…

Ryan was asleep in the backseat, cheek against Terror’s fur.

Butcher’s hand was steady on the wheel. On his thigh.

The night rolled by with nothing chasing them but time.

Maybe this was the life he’d never earned.

Maybe it wasn’t about him anymore.

Maybe… maybe the boring, plain nothing was peace.

Homelander shut his eyes. Let the dark carry him a little while longer.

Homelander stared at Butcher’s hand where it rested, warm and steady on his thigh.

It wasn’t just that Butcher could run. That he had a dozen exits planned, that he’d been ready since day one. It wasn’t just that he could fake IDs and cut wires and disappear into shadows.

It was that he would.

Without question.

Without hesitation.

For them.

He could burn bridges, abandon vendettas, let go of the life he’d lived for blood and revenge: for them.

For a dog, a boy, and a weapon in recovery.

That was love.

Not flowers and promises. Not vows and diamonds, but escape routes. Bags packed. Plans made in silence and sealed with loyalty.

A getaway car rumbling down a moonlit road, and a man who meant it when he said: ‘I’ve got you.’

The realization pulled something loose in Homelander’s chest.

Something old.

Something aching.

Maybe love wasn’t grand speeches and golden statues.

Maybe it was this….

Choosing him when there was no gain.

Holding on when everything else begged to be let go.

His eyelids felt heavy.

It was peace.

He let himself lean a little closer, just enough for their shoulders to touch. Let the highway hum lull him again. Homelander fell asleep and after a few hours blinked awake to the stillness of the countryside.

Outside the windshield, there was nothing but darkness and cow pastures, handmade fences, and the sound of crickets calling into the night.

No city skyline.

No glowing Vought tower.

Just the middle of nowhere, and the cold weight of anonymity settling in.

Butcher held out a box… black, cheap, and ugly.

A buck-fifty at most.

“Put this in your hair,” he said, no room for debate in his tone.

Homelander took it without question.

He didn’t protest. Didn’t laugh it off. Just opened the box, snapped on the baggy plastic gloves, and started dragging the dye through his golden hair, plopped on and through the tips to the roots.

His fingers trembled.

The gloves crinkled like dead leaves.

Minutes ticked by, each one louder than the last.

It felt like erasing himself.

Like watching a god drown in slow motion.

The dye stung his scalp.

It smelled like chemicals and change, still he didn’t stop.

When it was time, Butcher stepped out, opened the door, and poured a gallon jug of lukewarm water over his head like a priest with holy water. Homelander knelt in the roadside grass, letting it soak through his hair, run down his neck, streak his shirt.

No mirrors.

No applause.

Just the sound of water hitting dirt.

Butcher wiped his face gently with a hand towel.

Neither of them said a word.

Then they got back in the car.

Engine turned over.

Tires found the road.

The Cadillac rumbled forward.

Homelander sat with wet hair, sticky skin, and a heart that felt… new.

Unfamiliar.

No cape. No spotlight.

No blonde.

Just a man in jeans, in hiding, fleeing everything he ever was, and for once he didn’t look back. He rubbed the hand towel through his hair, rough and ungraceful, like he was trying to wipe away everything he used to be.

The towel was scratchy and smelled like the truck of the Cadillac… oil and heat and old leather.

He wiped his neck, his cheeks, the water behind his ears, then flicked on the overhead light with a click that echoed too loudly in the dark.

He caught his reflection in the cracked visor mirror.

“I look…” His voice caught in his throat, “I look…”

He didn’t finish.

Couldn’t.

The man staring back at him didn’t look like The Homelander.

He looked like a stranger. Sharp jaw, pitch-black hair still damp and clinging to his forehead, eyes impossibly blue against tan, clean skin.

He looked human.

Butcher let out a low whistle, the kind that meant trouble or temptation… sometimes both.

“Black hair and blue eyes?” he muttered, biting back a grin, “Fuck… You look more like an old school movie star than ever before.”

Homelander didn’t say anything. Just stared.

Then, slowly, he blushed.

Not from embarrassment, but something warmer.

Something boyish.

Something no one ever gave him without an angle.

Butcher reached over and adjusted the collar of his shirt like it was instinct.

Like he belonged to him.

Like this whole plan; the dye, the road, the running, it wasn’t some mission, but a beginning.

He sighed; quiet, almost inaudible beneath the rumble of the road. He reached out across the seat and found Butcher’s hand, fingers brushing once before he took it properly, lacing their fingers together like it was the only thing anchoring him.

His grip was firm, but not desperate.

Like he was holding something sacred, because this was the part of him he never wanted to lose.

“I can’t imagine flying away without you,” he said softly, eyes forward but unfocused. The silence stretched, thick with truth and unspoken grief.

The night outside was endless.

Cow country blurred into black hills, into sky, into nowhere.

“Then again…” His voice cracked, raw like a torn muscle, “I don’t know if I’ll ever fly again.”

He swallowed hard, ashamed to even say it.

Flying was his freedom.

Flying was power.

Flying was everything Vought had promised him he was. It felt like a myth he’d suddenly grown out of overnight. Like it belonged to someone else.

Butcher didn’t say anything at first.

He just squeezed his hand and let the weight of it sit between them.

Not fixing it.

Not denying it.

Just being there.

 

Six months slipped by like a dying season, slow, colourless, and cold in places no one could reach.

Time didn’t heal anything.

It only dulled the edges of the bleeding.

Homelander no longer existed.

Not here. Not anymore.

Now there was John Butcher; a name borrowed from the man who saved him, or maybe ruined him depending on the hour. Black-dyed hair colour, grown out and uneven.

A scruffy dark beard he couldn’t shave.

He wore a baseball cap pulled down low not for the sun, but to hide the face the world used to fear and respect.

A face he no longer recognized himself.

They lived in a weather-beaten farmhouse somewhere deep in Pennsylvania, where the trees stood guard like ghosts and the silence stretched for miles. There were no neighbors.

No voices shouting his name.

No billboards with his face.

No screams, no cameras, no cities left to burn.

Just a boy, a dog, and the man who once swore to kill him.

Sometimes he forgot what his old voice sounded like.

The pitch he used for speeches, for threats, for lies. Out here, people called him John in passing; and he said “yeah” and nodded like it meant something.

At night, he’d stand out on the porch in the freezing wind with a chipped mug of black coffee, staring up at the stars like they were mocking him. He didn’t fly anymore. He didn’t even try. He wasn’t sure if he could, or if something inside him had broken for good. Some nights, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to.

Inside, Butcher dried dishes in silence while drinking whiskey.

Ryan worked on his homework with his head down and Terror snoring at his feet.

The warmth of the house was thin, like it wasn’t meant for someone like him.

Peace didn’t feel like peace.

It felt like penance.

John Butcher, whatever was left of him, was trying to deserve it.

When he doesn’t feel like playing John, he waits until the house is quiet, until Butcher’s snoring rumbles like a tired old furnace and Ryan’s soft breathing filters through the walls like some ghost of innocence, and he slips out the bedroom window like a coward or a shadow.

The roof creaks under him, cold and familiar. The kind of familiar that makes your heart ache. He stands at the edge in his worn blue flannel and black socks, wind biting his cheeks, staring into nothing.

Into everything.

The woods stretch out below him like a mouth waiting to swallow him whole.

Some nights, he wills himself to jump. Not to die. Just to fly. To see. To remember what it felt like to rise above it all, to break the sound barrier with nothing but want in his chest; his feet won’t leave the shingles.

His knees lock up like old rusted gears.

He thinks about walking into the woods. About lasering a tree in half just to see if he can, just to feel something; he doesn’t. The last time he tried, he threw up after. Shaking and sweating and swearing it would be the last time he touched the power he used to worship.

The silence is loud out here.

It reminds him of the soundproof cells they used to keep the unstable supes in.

The ones who cracked.

Had he?

The ones who screamed and clawed and whispered to the walls until they went still.

Had he?

He wonders if this is what becoming human feels like; not gentle or warm, but brittle and unfinished.

A bad joke with no punchline.

He watches the trees until they blur, black against black. Until the chill settles into his bones and his fingers go numb. Then he climbs back through the window, quiet as the dead, slipping into bed beside Butcher without a word.

The wind rattles the gutters.

The night presses in.

John Butcher closes his eyes, wondering if the man he used to be is still up there on that roof, staring down.

 

Three months later, nothing has changed… except maybe the silence has gotten heavier.

Thicker.

Like dust settling on furniture no one touches anymore.

The kind of quiet that creeps under your skin and makes your chest feel too tight to breathe right.

He spends more time on the roof now.

Or sitting in the window, knees to his chest, forehead pressed against the cold glass.

He tells himself it’s for the view, for the air, for a moment alone; but really, it’s shame.

It’s the bitter truth that even after everything, he still can’t sleep through the night without needing to feel above something.

Without needing to pretend, for just a few minutes, that he could still lift off and disappear into the stars if he really wanted to, but he doesn’t go out there in front of anyone. It’s humiliating, the way he has to climb out the window, slow, careful, human; through the creaky old window, the sill digging into his ribs.

There’s no grace in it. No power.

Just this… desperate, secret ritual.

He doesn’t want Ryan to see.

Or Butcher.

He doesn’t want to explain what it means, why the roof matters more to him than anything inside that house.

Why he sits with his fingers clenched and his glowing red eyes searching the treeline like he’s waiting for something to call him home.

Sometimes he sleeps up there. When Butcher stays out at the bar til dawn. Not because it’s comfortable, it’s not, but because he can’t bear to be inside anymore.

Not when the walls feel like they’re closing in, like they know what he is.

Or what he was.

The birds don’t land near him anymore. The dog won’t sit by him. He thinks maybe they can still smell it on him. The supe. The monster.

The one who used to be a god.

Then in the mornings, when the sun rises and paints the trees in pale gold, Homelander pulls his hat down low over his dyed black hair, crawls back through the window, and disappears again into the man called John.

A lie, wrapped in denim and flannel.

A shadow of a myth who forgot how to fly.

John sits in the window like he does most days now, his legs curled up awkwardly beneath him, the old wood cold against his spine.

The fall breeze moves through his hair, black, rougher, nothing like what it used to be, and brushes across his face like a ghost of a memory. He closes his eyes and tries to remember how it felt the first night they drove here. Just him, Butcher, the boy, and the dog. Bags in the trunk, radio humming low, a silence between them that wasn’t empty, but full. Tired hearts, no destination, but a plan… freedom, that’s what it had felt like. At least, that’s what he remembers.

That’s what he tells himself.

He wonders now if he’s made it up, if maybe it hadn’t felt that good. Maybe it had been fear and adrenaline and desperation twisted into something prettier in hindsight. Maybe the warmth he swears he felt in his chest was just a side effect of finally giving up. Letting go of the cape, of the eyes on him, the worship, the pressure. He tries to believe it was relief. He tries not to admit it might’ve been grief.

The leaves are turning outside. He watches one drift down, slow and spiraling. Everything dies so beautifully out here, he thinks. Even time.

Behind him, the house creaks, old bones settling. Butcher’s voice echoes faintly down the hall, Ryan laughing, the dog’s nails clicking on the floorboards.

Life still happens here.

He’s part of it, technically… But some part of him, some critical, hollow part, is always somewhere else.

He presses his fingers against the glass and exhales. For a second, he lets himself imagine what it would feel like to float again. Not to run. Not to fight. Just…rise.

He stays in the window until the chill bites too deep, until the sunset disappears, and he can’t remember if the ride out here had been beautiful or just the beginning of another kind of end.