knife_bender | Vought Tower

It had taken Annie much longer to get off that rooftop than she would have liked, considering she hadn't been able to stop looking at Alex the entire time. She'd been transfixed by the mess of viscera right up until she'd had the presence of mind to text Maeve, and she'd still been staring at it when the other woman had leapt, gracefully, up onto the rooftop to witness Alex with her.

It was thanks to Maeve that Vought would be sending a cleanup crew to that rooftop -- they'd probably arrived by now -- and it was thanks to Maeve that Ashley knew to get a story ready. And, most importantly, it was thanks to Maeve that Annie was even upright as she made her way down the hall to her own apartment.

"Keep breathing," Maeve advised softly, one hand on Annie's back as she got the door open and steered her into the apartment. "Remember what I said."

It was good advice, considering Annie was hyperventilating still, and it only got worse when she actually laid eyes on Diego and his totally unharmed person. "You're here," she breathed, the first words she'd said since Maeve had pulled her off the rooftop, and her face actually crumpled anew as she crossed over to frantically pull Diego into a hug, Maeve lingering by the door for the moment.

Oh god, what happened now? It was definitely not a good thing when Maeve had to bring his fiancée in.

"Of course I'm here," Diego said, putting his arms around her. "What happened?"

He thought this was just a quick promotional thing!

Given that Annie was still hyperventilating and crying, Maeve figured it would take her a second to answer. So don't mind her stepping in and moving over to turn Annie's TV on and as loud as the volume would allow.

"Bathroom," she reminded Annie, pitching her voice loud enough to be heard over the noise. She'd already told Annie what to do on the way over, and she'd gotten enough of a response that she knew she'd been heard, but Maeve remembered how panic could take over your brain the way it clearly was with Annie.

She paused as she crossed by them again, and gave Diego a look that fell somewhere between transparent fear and pity, before moving over to the door and shutting it behind her.

Right. Bathroom. Maeve had told her what to do, and Maeve would know better than anyone what the best course of action was when dealing with -- something like this.

"I can't --" she started to tell Diego, her voice cracking again before she pulled away to latch the deadbolt behind Maeve, and reached for Diego's hand to lead the way into the bathroom.

She'd be turning on all the faucets once they were in there, too. Not that any of this would actually keep Homelander out if he wanted in, but -- she had to think in baby steps, here. And right now, the baby step she could concentrate on was telling Diego what had happened, and what it meant.

...maybe she needed to break that baby step down, too.

Diego followed dutifully, understanding that clearly Annie needed to do this with the faucets and the TV before she could calm down and focus.

"What can I do to help?" Because he was starting to get kind of freaked out.

Good. He should be freaked out. Annie was so freaked out she couldn't even think straight -- which was why she was focusing on things like methodically turning on the sink and the shower, and closing the door before reaching for Diego again.

"Stay here," she answered illogically, her voice muffled against his shoulder. But she knew she needed to be clearer than that. "Homelander -- Homelander...."

She could still see it. She'd be seeing that rooftop every day for the rest of her life.

"...killed Alex."

"Oh, fuck." He should have known it would be something like that, considering how upset she was. He put his arms around Annie again, one hand running up and down her back soothingly. "Oh god, babe, I'm so sorry."

"He ripped him apart," Annie continued, the floodgates kind of open now that she was talking about it. "In -- pieces. Made me look at him."

And that, of course, was awful enough without getting into Homelander's horrific threat and justification, but she'd get there. She was working through this as she could.

"Jesus." Diego knew Homelander was a sick dude, but that was a whole lot. "I don't get it-- why would he do that? Wasn't he okay with Alex being on the team?"

Annie tightened her arms around him, because while Homelander's motivations didn't actually make sense to her, his logic had been explained fairly well.

"It was about me," she said softly, taking a few deep breaths to try to get herself under control enough to talk. (The crying was going to keep happening off and on, though. Didn't seem to be much she could do about that.) "And you."

Oh, God, she was going to be sick. Back to the deep breaths.

"Okay, what?" Diego asked, pulling back slightly so he could get a good look at her. "Take some breaths and tell me everything."

Okay. Okay, where to start? With That'll be Diego? (She was going to be sick if she concentrated on those words and the image that insisted on asserting itself to go along.) She needed to back up further, though, because that wasn't really why Alex had been killed.

She had been trained for this. She could explain herself better, even if every instinct was screaming and insisting she not calm down.

"Maeve has a plan," she started, pulling back enough to swipe a hand over her face, trying to clear away tears and glitter. "To go with the Russia thing. She's been training -- but it's secret, that's why you haven't seen her in the gym. And she's sober."

Okay, good start, even if none of that had anything directly to do with Alex, or his death, or the threat on Diego's life that Annie was doing her best to ignore for the moment so she could actually think and communicate.

Edited 2022-08-17 17:39 (UTC)

"Whoa. Maeve's not fucking around." Maeve being sober was even more impressive than Klaus getting sober. "That suddenly makes me feel a lot better about the Russia thing."

Because when it had just been Hughie's plan it did not fill him with much hope.

Annie nodded, because yeah -- Maeve was absolutely not fucking around. "She knows Butcher," she added softly, tempted to latch onto that tiny bit of hope peeking through the fucking abject despair that she was finding even more tempting to cling to. "She's the one who told them the Russians have this thing. But she wants to be able to distract Homelander for them, by herself, and I...told her I could get together a team."

So really, this was all Annie's fault. Just like Homelander had said -- she'd killed Alex as much as he had.

(Though if her brain would calm down enough to really replay that conversation, she'd realize there was someone else involved. Homelander hadn't found out about the coup on his own, after all.)

"And Alex wanted to be part of the team?" Diego guessed. That seemed like the selfless thing Alex would do, and Diego didn't even know him all that well. Had known him.

"Then Homelander found out somehow."

"I asked him," Annie replied, her voice breaking again. It was her fault. It was all her fault. "And he agreed right away. No questions. Fucking heroic."

So of course he'd been killed. No one that decent got to stick around here. It was either be killed, or spend his life being psychologically tortured Annie and Maeve-style. Those were the options for people who joined this team, regardless of where their moral compass lay. Even The Deep had gone through some pretty awful shit recently, thanks to his return to the team. (Not that Annie knew about Timothy, RIP.)

"You were right to ask him. He's good at what he does," Diego said. "And then he made his choice. This is not your fault."

Because he could see alllll that guilt on her face.

It was her fault. Homelander had said so. And it was her fault how Diego's life was now precariously in the balance, the threat finally actually made explicit after dangling over them for a year.

But she really, really wanted to believe him, anyway. She herself had justified this earlier as Alex making his own choice, right?

"He asked me if I wanted to fly when we left the club," she said, pressing a little closer to be heard over the ambient noise pollution of the apartment. "Alex was up on a roof. He must've -- put him there earlier. I just saw him, before we left."

Homelander must have acted quickly. That was frightening, too.

"That's really fucking sick," he said, tightening his arms around her again. "All of it--what he did to Alex, using it as a warning to you--"

Obviously he couldn't actually do that to Annie considering her popularity, but just as a general threat was enough. Did not occur to Diego that he would be next for some reason.

"--did he say how he figured it out?"

"No, he -- wait." Annie cut herself off, frowning as she replayed that horrifying conversation in her head and focused on what Homelander had said, beyond, 'That'll be Diego,' which had naturally been ringing in her ears ever since. "He said A-Train told him."

But how had A-Train even known? Annie and Maeve would have both known better than to ask his sneaky ass to do anything, but -- "Alex must have asked A-Train to help," she realized, and that just made it all hurt worse.

Oh, Alex. You stupid, stupid hero. She hadn't warned him enough.

Edited 2022-08-17 18:21 (UTC)

"Fuck." Yeah, that definitely sounded plausible. Poor Alex, he hadn't even been on the team long enough to know A-Train was not to be trusted.

"I'm so sorry," Diego said again, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. "Alex was a good guy."

Diego stupidly thought he had heard the worst of the story.

"He was." Better than the team had deserved, as was abundantly clear now. At least it looked like it had probably been quick? (Unless Homelander hadn't started with his face. She couldn't think about this.)

"He made me look at him," she continued, closing her eyes in the hopes it would help her focus. (It didn't, really. She just saw Alex, the way she'd see Alex behind her eyelids for a long time.) "And he said that if I --"

She cut herself off as her hands each found an anchoring hold on Diego's arms. Just to reassure her that he was here. He was still alive.

"If I step out of line again, that would be you. And then he made me repeat it, while looking at him."

Ah. Suddenly this all made even more sense, with how Annie had trouble getting the words out, and the clinging.

That was another smart move of Homelander--take someone away from Annie and then remind her it can get worse at the same time.

"Jesus," he said again. He didn't even know what else he could say. He couldn't guarantee that it wouldn't happen because it looked like Homelander could, in fact, do whatever he wanted.

"Yeah." Annie swallowed around another lump in her throat, shaking her head. "I didn't know if you'd be here, still."

Which was a very delicate, trying-not-to-give-herself-nightmares way of saying that she had half-expected Maeve to open that door to a blood-soaked apartment, no matter what Homelander had actually said he'd do.

"I'm here," Diego said, giving her a squeeze to prove that. "I haven't even seen Homelander since this morning."

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