knife_bender | MHA #2 | Tuesday Evening

After the thing with Homelander in the elevator, Annie had found some resolve. She'd gone back to her own apartment and changed out of the Starlight bodysuit and into a hoodie and jeans. She'd painstakingly taken off her wig. She'd texted Hughie to say she'd see him tomorrow with the information he'd asked for about Stormfront.

She had also taken about ten minutes to sit on the floor with her head on her knees, trying to get her breathing under control. It had sort of worked, but there was a floaty, lightheaded uneasiness driving Annie, now. Like she was separate from her body, until the panic crashed into her again.

This had all gotten to be so much. She hadn't slept well in weeks -- even in Fandom, she woke up in the middle of the night and stared at the ceiling for hours, her dreams plagued with nightmares and general uneasiness -- and in the days since her confrontations in New Jersey and on set, things had just gotten progressively worse.

It was all just too much for her. And while she had Hughie -- and the guys he worked with, she supposed -- in the thick of it with her, it was also...it wasn't enough. She didn't know she could actually count on those guys, if she needed them.

But she did know who she could count on. And as incredibly, disgustingly selfish she felt about it, she knew she couldn't do this alone anymore.

So, she was knocking lightly as she let herself into Diego's apartment, again without having texted -- mostly because, honestly, she didn't have her phone with her. She'd brought her burner, and a bag, but she wasn't really planning on going back to the tower again. (Maybe not ever? She'd see how this went.)

"Hey," she said softly as she let herself in. It was obvious she'd been crying, if nothing else, but for the moment she was trying to put on something of a brave face. "Sur-- surprise."

The brave face wasn't going to last all that long, apparently.

Annie, you had to stop surprising him like this. These were not fun surprises.

He could immediately see something was wrong, and quickly went over to be by her side. "Hey, what happened? Are you okay?"

Maybe there would be fun surprises someday! Probably not, but maybe.

Annie had an explanation all ready to go -- she'd had a hard time slowing her mind down enough to come up with a plan, but she'd pieced together something of a coherent narrative about how Homelander had scared her again, more explicitly and clearly than before, and how Stormfront seemed to have some sort of creepy plan for her, and how Annie genuinely no longer felt remotely safe at the tower, and how she needed help.

She'd plotted out the broad strokes of what she was going to say on the way over, but Annie actually didn't have a lot of experience with what panic does to the brain. So her explanation was going to have to wait a second, in favor of Annie's face crumbling and her managing a soft, "I can't do this anymore," before burying her face against Diego's shoulder.

"Hey, it's okay," he said, putting his arms around her. "What's going on?"

"Homelander choked me."

Let's start there. That was what had set this in motion, and why she was here now, when she'd been pretty determined to stick it out the whole week in New York without running back to Fandom.

Instead, she was pretty strongly considering just abandoning her position in The Seven, entirely. It was starting to get to be too dangerous to try to work from the inside.

"He waited until he got me alone," she added, turning her head so her words weren't so muffled. "And he almost killed me."

"What the fuck," he said, pulling back slightly to look at her. "Does he know that you...?"

You know. Leaked the whole Compound V thing. He figured not, since he knew that she probably wouldn't be standing here if Homelander did know. Which was a terrifying thought.

"I don't think so. He's pissed I didn't kill Hughie when he told me to, and he thinks -- that that points to, like, me working with him," Annie said, swiping at her eyes. Which, you know, good detective work, there, Homelander, she was working with him. "But Stormfront knows, and I think she's...like, waiting until the right time to tell Homelander."

Whenever that might be. Annie still hadn't quite figured out Stormfront's whole...plan. (Though it hadn't escaped her notice that she'd cozied up to blond, blue-eyed Homelander, and was now talking about having plans for the other blonde on the team. She wasn't sure what it meant, but she was sure it fit together with how shitty Stormfront had been to A-Train on Saturday.)

"Fuck." That really, really wasn't good. "God, Annie, I'm sorry. This is all--we're kind of fucked, aren't we?"

"Yeah." Annie actually managed a soft laugh, because they were so far beyond fucked, at this point. "Yeah, he brought you up again. To remind me he knows about you."

And so, as much as that had terrified her -- maybe even more than being directly threatened herself by Homelander -- Annie pulled back a bit to look up at him. "So, like...I don't think I can do this alone, anymore. Not that I've been alone, but -- like...."

She'd turned him down before, for his own safety, but at this point Annie was pretty sure Diego's safety was already pretty compromised. Along with her own.

"Do you still want to help?"

"Yeah, of course." He was still a little confused by how he could actually help, but he was more than willing to just stand there if it would help her in any way.

"Are you sure you want to go back?" he asked. Look, she had done a lot for Hughie and his cause already, he wouldn't blame her if she just wanted to say enough was enough.

"I don't know," Annie said softly, shaking her head. "I mean, I can't go back to the tower."

She managed a wobbly little smile. "I brought my action figures, just in case I never go back."

She meant her Kraken and Starlight ones, of course. Her dad's pipe was in her bag, too. She'd kind of treated it like an evacuation. Her pictures and most of her clothes could be replaced (and plus, it would probably give her a little time with Ashley, too, if it looked like she had just stepped out, rather than left.)

Hearing that made Diego pull her close again. It was unnerving to see her so scared, even if he knew she had more than enough reason to be.

"We'll figure it out," he said. "Don't ask me how just yet, but we'll think of something."

That made Annie feel just a tiny bit better. It didn't matter that he didn't have a plan -- like, she didn't either, because this was all so huge and impossible. But just being here was comforting, and being held like this was soothing in a very instinctive, primal sort of way, and the promise that they'd figure it out together was enough to calm her down a bit.

Enough that she could focus a little, anyway.

"I'm supposed to go meet Hughie tomorrow," she said quietly, leaning against Diego. "Will you come with me?"

The question was hesitant, because even as much as she knew she needed help, she also hated that she was asking him to put himself in danger. (Though she had also been running down a list of people she could ask for help, here. Diego of course was number one, but if she had to come back and ask more people for help, Rey was next. Then maybe Steve. And so it went.)

"Yeah, of course, whatever you need." Sure, he wasn't a big fan of the guy but Annie's situation seemed to be "siding with people who suck slightly less than the people who also suck" and he would just have to deal with that.

"When do you think Vought is going to notice you're missing?"

"Maybe tomorrow?" Annie guessed, actually really thinking about it for a second. "I need to figure out something to do with my tracker, because as soon as I show up on the map again, they'll find me. And like...Homelander's already this mad, and Stormfront said this really creepy shit about how I'm going to help her."

So if they realized she'd tried to create an exit strategy for herself and caught her, it would probably be a hundred times worse.

"Ew, that is creepy." Stormfront likely wouldn't be thrilled with Annie's choice in boyfriends either, so it was best if they worked super hard to not get caught.

"I forgot about your tracker." That was also creepy of Vought. "Do you think we could, I don't know, short it out? It's not like anything I have on hand is going to get rid of it."

He already knew from experience that his knives wouldn't do anything to Annie's skin.

Stormfront would absolutely have some choice thoughts about Annie's taste in men, yes. (Though she hadn't yet said anything about Maeve's girlfriend, Elena, even as Homelander was pointing out her ethnicity for diversity brownie points on television.)

"You don't have like...access to a taser, do you?" Annie asked, looking vaguely ill at the idea of purposely electrocuting herself but maybe that would work? Though it did seem unlikely that she'd be vulnerable to that, given the nature of her own powers, but then, Annie had never been electrocuted.

(You know, yet.)

"Otherwise I'm going to have to find a way to cut it out of me." Which meant maybe hitting up, like...jewelry stores to find something sharp enough to hurt her skin.

Romantic.

"Maybe there's one at work? But do you think that actually would do anything?" That seemed like something that only worked on TV. "I guess it'd be hard to tell even if it did work."

"So I guess we're going to have to cut it out." And now it was Diego looking vaguely ill.

"I'm so sorry," Annie said, her lower lip wobbling a little before she got herself under control again with a shake of her head. "For -- getting involved in any of this."

It was entirely her fault that they were now in a situation where Annie was going to have to find someone or something willing to hack into her shoulder.

And, honestly, that was like, the least dangerous part about all of this.

Edited 2021-06-01 14:24 (UTC)

"Hey, don't apologize. There was no way you knew what you were getting into," he said. "And you're doing the right thing. Something needs to be done about Vought."

"There's going to be a hearing about Compound V," she shared with a tiny smile. "Like a congressional hearing, I mean. So...they're facing some consequences, which is great, but I also made them really mad."

She reached a hand up to gently smooth her fingertips along his neck, biting her lower lip. "So they're kind of the most dangerous they could be, right now. You don't have to come back with me if you -- like, it might not be a good idea."

But she also obviously really, really wanted him with her. It was maybe the most selfish thing she'd ever wanted in her life, and if Diego got hurt, she'd never forgive herself. But he was competent and smart and an asset. (Like, he was for sure more cut out for all this than Hughie was, for fuck's actual sake.)

"I wanted to go with you in the first place," he reminded her. "I want to be wherever you are."

Romantic.

"Even if it's a shitshow."

Not so romantic.

Annie visibly melted a little, and okay, maybe she was tearing up again and this time it wasn't really related to how scared she was about all of this.

It was all overwhelming. Feelings included.

"I had to offer," she said quietly, wrapping her arms up around his neck. "I want to be where you are, always, but I want you to be safe, too."

But you know. She also loved him for his bravery and his skills, and it was maybe time to stop sidelining her hero boyfriend in the name of supposedly keeping him safe.

"I don't think being safe is really a thing in our line of work," Diego said, putting his arms around her waist. "But I'll be as careful as I can."

"Keeping people safe is," Annie replied stubbornly. "But like -- if someone brings out a gun, you get behind me, right? And you'll need to be...like, discreet about your powers. If people realize you have them, they'll think you're like the rest of us and will treat you accordingly."

And thus there would be much more cavalier attitudes about the amount of damage it was presumed he could handle.

Edited 2021-06-01 15:13 (UTC)

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