knife_bender | Vought Tower

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Vought Tower | Wednesday Night

The last 24 hours had been it's own special type of hell, and the fact that Diego was banned from leaving the tower just made him even more anxious and irritated. It was a smart move from Homelander, holding him hostage, since it incapacitated both him and Annie. At least Annie was allowed to go outside.

Speaking of, she should be getting back from work any minute, which was something. Maybe Hughie had updated her on what went down in Russia.

...which was just a weird thing to think about. What was this, 1985?

[NFB due to distance, but open for the girl and calls/texts if people would like]

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"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."

"God, that was this morning." Today had been so incredibly fucked. She couldn't believe all of this had happened in the same day. "Did you see the news? Mr. Edgar got fired."

Which was maybe simplifying things a bit, but Annie was not inclined to get into the particulars of corporate structure right now. The important part was that that man, in spite of his connections to Victoria, had been her closest thing to backup when it came to Homelander. Like, yes, she had Maeve, but Homelander didn't listen to Maeve the way he'd listened to Stan.

Which was probably exactly why Stan was gone, now.

"I saw," Diego said, frowning. "God, and I thought we were really fucked yesterday."

Now they were like super maxi fucked with wings.

"He'll notice if we leave for Fandom," Annie commented, completely hopeless as she leaned her head on Diego's shoulder. The tears were back, too. "I don't know what we're gonna do."

Other than wait for...Hughie Campbell to save the day.

Oh, God, they were all going to die.

Edited 2022-08-17 19:00 (UTC)

"We wait." Only choice that they had, really. For a few minutes today he had contemplated calling his siblings for help. If Homelander was an unmovable object, Viktor alone was an unstoppable force.

Unfortunately, the Hargreeves family had proven twice over that their mere presence in these types of situations tended to make things worse. We wanted to get rid of one man, not end the world.

Mostly, however, he didn't want to see any of them get hurt over his dumb ass.

"That's really all we can do," Diego said. "And that fucking sucks."

Annie would be lying if she said she hadn't thought about seeing whether Allison thought she had heard a rumor about Homelander going to live on the bottom of the ocean or something.

(Though that was a bad choice of fantasy rumors, anyway. They had, as dumb as he was, an ocean ringer.)

"Hughie'll call when they're back," she offered, using that fact to ground her a little. It did help. "And Maeve -- knows about Alex. She saw him, too."

Obviously. But that was helpful, since Vought was surely going to spin the shit out of this, and the fewer people she had to explain the truth to, the better.

Diego was grateful Maeve knew about Alex. He didn't think Annie was in any position to be dealing with that fallout. Let Vought come up with whatever ridiculous story they wanted to for now.

"How can I help you right now?" Diego murmured. "Are you hungry? Do you wanna drink? Wanna de-Starlight and lie in bed?"

He'd be able to help with any of those things.

Annie actually managed a very small, watery smile. After the high emotions of the evening -- the continued high emotions -- Diego's gentleness and offer to take care of her was exactly the sort of comfort she needed, on every level.

Even if, thanks to Homelander, the sweet little twinge she felt at being so transparently loved was immediately chased with That'll be Diego.

"Zipper?" she requested, reaching up to unfasten her cape with a clumsy hand. Considering she was determined to keep touching Diego, she might actually need help with more than just the zipper, this time. "And then bed, yeah."

Maybe with a bottle.

Edited 2022-08-17 20:06 (UTC)

"Good plan," he said, moving behind her to get her zipper undone. "Don't know how much sleeping I'm gonna do, now, though."

"I don't think I can ever sleep again," Annie admitted, feeling it to be the truth. She had seen some shit in the last year and a half or so, but the mangled body of her first boyfriend was a step beyond even the nightmareish condition of Stormfront last year, or even how they'd found Elliot back in 1963.

Not to mention, again, the threat that Alex's body had doubled as.

"All of this is my fault," she said, shaking her head. She'd been regretting pulling him into this the entire time, but it had mostly been because of the denial of his privacy, and his loss of autonomy at Homelander's will. But this was so much worse than it had been. "I never wanted...."

She'd never have taken this job, at all, if she'd known that it would pretty much ruin their lives. The co-captainship seemed to have put the nail in that coffin, after a year of feeling like she might actually have this.

"There was no way you could have seen any of this coming," Diego said. "This is Homelander's fault--and Vought's for letting him get this bad."

"Encouraging it," Annie supplied, slipping her bracers off. "He's trending."

She wondered if he would still be trending if everyone out there knew what he'd done tonight. The fact that she genuinely wasn't sure was terrifying.

"I bet they're gonna say Alex was on drugs," she realized, her eyes filling with now-furious tears all over again because that was so fucking unfair, to have that be his legacy after what he'd overcome. "To cover it up. He was -- he had a pill thing, for awhile."

"Yeah, you're probably right about that," Diego admitted. It was Vought, of course they were gonna say that. "Hopefully we'll be able to find a way to get the truth out. You know, after...all this...hostage taking thing."

God, he felt so useless right now.

"Can we...."

This felt so stupid, but it would make her feel a lot better. Annie considered the question for a moment as she leaned just enough to turn the shower off. (The sink, for the moment, was staying on. An abundance of white noise was almost as stupidly comforting as what she was about to propose.)

"I'm gonna change," she decided. "And then can we push the couch against the door?"

It wouldn't stop him, if he really wanted in. But it would give them time.

Diego nodded. "Yeah, of course we can."

He knew it wouldn't stop Homelander or Noir or whoever either, but it would be comforting having it there all the same.

"Man, I wish I spent the day thinking of booby traps I could set up." To be fair, he didn't know his life would be threatened today.

"At least there's knives in the chandelier," Annie offered, much less playfully than she might have a week ago. "And everywhere else."

Maybe they'd have a shot at Homelander's eyes. Though, if they missed -- wow, watch Annie not think about that as she led the way back into the bedroom so she could put on the first comfortable clothes she found.

(And maybe take off her boots. Everything was harder than it needed to be, right now. She still wasn't quite thinking her clearest.)

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