Chapter Text
Annie slips into the circular boardroom a few minutes late, easing the heavy door shut as quietly as she can. Homelander has already begun debriefing the rest of The Seven with their weekly crime analytics, pausing in the middle of his sentence just long enough for his eyes to flick toward her. His mouth flattens for a fraction of a second before he turns back to the holographic monitor in front of them.
“—up twelve percent in Midtown alone,” he continues smoothly, like the interruption never happened.
The others are already spread around the conference table. Ashley makes herself small, overseeing everything from the back of the room with her brand new assistant hanging awkwardly at her side. Light pours in from the massive windows, only deepening the shadows across their faces as they silently watch their captain, arms draping and adjusting over the glass. Annie mutters a quick apology as she rushes into her seat, smoothing her cape before she settles into place.
“Now, obviously the media’s gonna focus on those ‘subway incidents,’ but statistically speaking,” Homelander gestures lazily toward the screen as another map appears behind him, sections of the city glowing red and yellow, “armed robberies are still our biggest problem area and well… Maeve and I can’t be everywhere.” He lets the words hang for half a beat, expression softening into something faintly condescending, as if the point shouldn’t need explaining.
These meetings are never discussions, no room for questions or complaints. They’re about being talked at in the pursuit of alignment and control—polling numbers, sponsorships, projected response times, all the ins and outs of the Vought-approved patrol routes. And yet, for all of it, Annie finds herself absorbed in a way she never gets to feel anywhere else in the tower. Her attention isn’t drawn to the control, or the branding, or the way everything is filtered through soulless corporate jargon—but to the moments where something concrete finally slips through. Being told where she can go, who she might help, what she can actually do.
It gives her small flashes of the life she thought she was signing up for. Something about it makes her feel useful. Like a hero, if only in pieces.
At the back of the room, Ashley reaches absently for her coffee, cupping it along with a stylus gripped carefully in her other hand. She takes a sip and recoils, hissing faintly through her teeth.
Homelander stops talking. Not for a brief second this time, either.
The room falls silent as he turns his head from the presentation screen toward the two women wedged away in the corner. His body is perfectly still.
“Too hot?”
Ashley’s eyes widen. Her jaw clenches tight as her gaze darts rapidly between the mug and the young assistant standing beside her chair. Her lips pop open, empty, before snapping shut again.
“That’s not acceptable, is it?” Homelander asks mildly, leaning slightly toward the table. The fabric of his suit gives a soft squeak as he shifts. “I mean… just how hard is it to do your job the correct way, hm? Ashley here could’ve been scalded.”
“No, no, it’s—,” Ashley shakes her head immediately. “It’s perfect, really, it’s fine—”
“The coffee is fine?”
The assistant stiffens. Her knuckles go white around the notebook in her arms.
“I prefer it this way actually,” Ashley cuts in, too fast. “I’d much rathe—”
“She’s a big girl, Ashley. She can speak for herself.”
The temp stammers. “Y-yes, sir… it’s fine.”
“Then have a sip.”
Annie’s heart rises into her throat. The version of heroism she was holding onto a moment ago drains out of the room.
The assistant hesitates. Then she takes the mug from Ashley and offers a small, careful sip, fighting hard not to react.
“Oh come on now,” Homelander scoffs. “That was nothing! Surely you know how much damage high heat can do to soft tissue. I want you to prove to me you wouldn’t actually be so careless.”
Everyone tenses. It’s like a video of some unspeakable event, knowing there’s nothing you can do to reach out and change it. It’s just something that happened. It was always going to happen.
The temp’s hands are shaking hard enough now that dark drops spill over the rim onto the carpet. Tears well up in her eyes as she forces another drink. Annie sees it now, in the light; the steam rolling off of it. This poor girl’s mouth must be scorched.
“Well?”
“It’s fine,” she chokes out, nearly crying.
Homelander leans back again in his chair. He lets out a tiny scoff.
Red beams lance across the conference room and strike the mug still clutched between the assistant’s hands. She jerks instinctively as the ceramic heats up at the edge of her fingers. Steam, far more violent now, starts curling upward in thick white ribbons. Tiny bubbles begin to rise. A sharp cracking sound splits through the room as the coffee rolls into a boil.
Homelander’s lasers vanish.
“Take another.”
The assistant cries down at the mug. Heat pours onto her face.
“Sir… Please, I— I can’t…”
“Sure you can.”
Nobody speaks, not even Maeve, and you can hear it, the unbearable terror in the young woman’s throat before she lifts the cup back to her lips. The second it nears her mouth her entire body flinches— hard enough to splash coffee across her wrist, a terrible hiss of burning flesh that Annie can only pray she imagined. The noises coming from the woman are awful now— choking, swallowing, sharp little breaths pulled through her nose. Her face looks swollen and pink the second she pulls back. Mascara streams down onto her collar.
Annie can’t watch anymore. She stares at Homelander, terrified and angry, wishing she was more powerful. She wishes she could push him back, could crush his skull with her mind.
His eyes glow red again. Annie’s breath hitches in her chest, just waiting for him to laser the woman in half. Instead it’s worse. Just another threat, before he smiles politely and says, “All of it.”
After it’s over, and the mug is empty, and the assistant is inaudibly wailing down on her knees with the rest of the room blank and catatonic, Homelander turns his attention back onto his presentation.
“Guess I was wrong,” he shrugs one of his shoulders. “Wasn’t too hot at all. Anyway… the Queens numbers are still salvageable—”
Annie waits for the door to latch. She barely even makes it three steps into her suite before it all comes pouring out of her.
“I hate him! God, I fucking hate him!”
Hughie is already there, sitting on the edge of the sofa with his computer draped over his lap. He jolts up immediately, hands half-raised like he’s not sure whether to catch her or calm her.
“Hey— hey, shhhh… keep your voice down,” he says, voice low, urgent. “What if he hears you?”
“He’s not listening to me,” she snaps, pacing. “He’s too busy— I don’t know— doing that thing where he just decides someone’s life is over.”
She stops, breath shaking.
“I mean, why is he even like this? You know? He’s just… broken. I don’t understand how someone can be this evil. Not even just self-serving. Genuinely and truly… evil.”
Hughie exhales slowly through his nose, like he’s choosing his words carefully.
Annie continues, “I just don’t know how long I can keep doing this. Every day, it’s like a knife at my throat… what he did today, in that meeting… and that was tame, for him… It never ends…”
“It’s Vought.” Hughie practically blurts. “I mean… not anymore, he’s a grown ass man, but— see, the way Butcher tells it— it’s like this. You have a bear. A baby one. And it can fly and… shoot lasers out of its eyes. And when it’s little it’s hopeful. It loves you, because it has to… it needs something to love it back. Only, you don't- ever love it back. You keep it in a cage and you poke it with a cattle prod every single day, and then when it’s old enough you just set it free.”
“He’s not an animal though, Hughie… He’s a person. He chooses to do this, every single day.”
“I know,” he says quickly. Softer now. “And believe me, I’m not trying to sound overly-empathetic here. He’s clearly psychotic, and a murderer, and a rapist, and he...” Hughie trails off, probably wanting to add that Homelander needs to be killed; that they’re working on figuring out how to do it, but he bites his tongue instead. “I’m just saying… you do that— to a person.. the way those scientists did… they were always going to make a monster. Vought gave someone this unstoppable power, and this thirst to be sadistic— and then they just unleashed him. Like that Jurassic Park movie, the one with Chris Pratt. Those guys made that fucked up, invisible dinosaur thing and then they just didn’t expect anything bad to ever happen.”
Annie’s shoulders drop a little. “I see what you’re saying, and I get it, I do… I’m sure that whatever Vought put him through, it…” She rubs a hand over the back of her neck, looking down at the floor for a moment. “But lots of people suffer through abuse… They confront it, they work through their issues, and they move on with their lives. There are so many people who go through unimaginable things, people who constantly need saving…” She closes her eyes, swears she can still smell the coffee. “They don’t turn out like Homelander.”
Hughie nods. When Annie looks up again he takes her into his arms, breaking away to quickly add, “I don’t think it’s an excuse. Please don’t.. ever think that— I just think that… until Vought gets taken down, they’re just going to keep making more of him. I know it’s hard, I mean… I can’t even imagine… But we can’t give up yet. We have to figure out a way to stop it… We have to see it through.”
“Yeah,” she says aloud, swallowing. Then inwardly, but it’s easier when you’re not the one who has to face it alone, every single time that it happens.
Hughie doesn’t say anything for a while after that. His arms stay around her, but looser now, like he’s letting her come back to herself instead of holding her in place.
Annie exhales slowly, looking out through the high window of her suite, keeping her eyes trained on the sky.