The Good Life: Watching Them Fall (ch. 21) (Patreon)

"... Oh…" Homelander whispered, his breath stuck behind a lump in his throat as he gazed down at the brain matter and blood on his gloved hand, the office blissfully silent. A bit of hair and flesh that was attached to a shard of skull fell from his fingers with an audible plop. He swallowed thickly, feeling strangely numb as he slowly turned his gaze downward to Madelyn. He couldn't recognize her. A pool of dark red blood spread out lazily on the floor from her shattered skull, brain matter and blood spraying across the back wall.

The baby was silent, but not because it was dead. The baby was gone entirely, and that gave Homelander some degree of panic. The baby was a supe, and now he was just out in the wild. A teleporter, if he had to guess, and a distant part of his mind was telling him that he should be focusing his super hearing to find the infant, but he was rooted to the spot. Now that he finally brought himself to look at her, he couldn't look away.

"I… I didn't…" He trailed off, a sob lodged in his throat. His eyes burned with tears and he fell back on old habits -- channel an emotional response into a practiced gesture. The one he chose, however, was to brush his hair back, streaking his face and hair with blood. Madelyn's blood. His bottom lip trembled but he fought back the tears. He loved her. Had loved her.

She might have been human, but he loved her. He saw in her the woman that he always wanted. Sure, she might have been old, but she had aged like a fine wine. Madelyn was the one that showed him the ropes. The one that cleaned up his messes. One person of two that he knew he could trust without a shadow of a doubt. She took care of him. Like a lover. Like a mother.

And he had killed her.

"This… this isn't my fault," he told her corpse even as tears blurred his vision. "How could you be this fragile?! It was just a little swing! A reflex! If you weren't human, you would have been fine!" He found himself yelling at her corpse. Humans were too fragile. That wasn't on him. That wasn't his fault. Did they have any idea how exhausting it was to constantly be aware of your own strength? He wasn't even allowed the simple gesture of brushing away a woman that tried to touch him. He couldn't even do that without breaking them.

He took in a sharp breath, blinking away the tears as he shook his head. "Fuck. Fuck! Alright… I need to… I need to clean this up," Homelander told himself. A plan of action. It had been some time since he needed help cleaning up a murder -- usually, he just found opportunities in action as it was a lot easier on Madelyn to spin a story than to sweep evidence under a rug. All the same, he still knew the process from back when he first started his career. Sniffling, Homelander dragged his other gloved hand under his nose.

Madelyn's office wasn't bugged  and didn't have any cameras, but there was still the issue that someone would notice that she had gone missing. This wasn't some nobody no one gave a shit about. This was Madelyn Stillwell. So he… he needed a fall guy. "Heartless," Homelander hissed, looking around for something to wrap the body in. "He was here. He killed Madelyn. I arrived and he fled," he plotted out the cover story. Madelyn would be proud of him for that, he figured, finding a box of tissues that he started dumping to mop up the blood. Instantly, the thin tissues were soaked red.

He used some to clean up his own face first. He might need something to explain the blood… should he go grab a beggar and claim that he was one of Heartless' henchmen? He-

Homelander was so distracted that he only became aware of the screeching hinges when the door was already halfway open. He jumped into action, blurring forward to grab the witness. The door slammed shut as he slammed her into the wall with his hand around her throat. Stormfront looked back at him with a shocked expression and Homelander allowed himself a moment of relief that it wasn't Cinder.

Cinder, he actually liked. She thought she was subtle, but her tormenting the Deep was… well… deeply amusing. He'd feel bad if he had to kill her, but Stormfront? He barely knew her. So, with a fist raised, he went to smash her head open, wondering how he was going to spin this. Then Stormfront spoke.

"I can help you!" She blurted, making the fist pause halfway towards her face. "With the body. I… overheard."

Homelander tilted his head, "You want to help me?" He echoed, highly suspicious. "Why?"

"Because you're Homelander," Stormfront breathed and Homelander almost rolled his eyes. A groupie. "You're perfect," Stormfront continued, her voice raspy with his hand around her throat. The sheer enraptured devotion in her voice did give him pause because, groupie or not, most would be freaking out by this point. "You killed her. So what?"

His grip on her throat lessened a fraction. "What do you get out of helping me?" He growled the question at her, still not buying it.

Then he felt her hand land on his cock, stroking him through the suit. That was… "An opportunity to prove my devotion to you," she replied and he listened to her heartbeat and breathed deeply. Her heart rate was elevated, but given the circumstances, he expected that. What he didn't expect was the scent of arousal. She was wet. "I can help you get rid of the body. Let me help you," she all but begged.

He released his grip on her neck, satisfied. She was fucking crazy, but she'd do whatever he wanted and that was enough for him. If he thought that she had loose lips, then he'd just kill her. Stormfront massaged her neck, and she was at least smart enough to watch him warily for a moment after he took a step back before she began to approach the body. "Such a shame, but it couldn't be helped," she whispered under her breath but to his ears, she might as well have shouted it at the top of her lungs.

His lips thinned, feeling some residual guilt. It couldn't be helped. She was right. She was a hundred percent right. It couldn't be helped. This was just the natural conclusion to something that was always going to happen. Like… how could he have fucked her properly without reducing her into a bleeding sack of bone shards? He practiced a bit here and there, but every time he found a human that was marginally better than the rest of their kind, he was always left feeling…

Restrained.

"We can use the couch cushions," Stormfront said, grabbing one of Madelyn's legs and snapping it. Blood squelched out, the bone ripping free of the meat as her leg was ripped off at the knee.

"Makes sense," Homelander decided, floating over to the couch to take out the stuffing. "I'll just throw the couch clear of the city. And remind Deep not to start poking around." A simple solution. It would explain why the body wasn't here, so no trace evidence could be led back to him. As for the blood… he could easily collapse the floor and with a couple dozen deaths… Madelyn would just be one more bloodstain. "Is this your first time?"

Stormfront laughed at that, "Hardly. I got in some trouble for it a while ago, but I'll always take the chance to kill some lesser beings."

Homelander smiled, "Lesser beings, huh? I like it. It describes them perfectly." This wasn't exactly where he expected to find a kindred spirit, but he was glad at least someone understood -- humans were less. They were fragile, weak, and completely dependent on technology to make up for their shortcomings. Their only redeeming feature was their potential -- their potential to become more.

To become super.

It was messy work shoving Madelyn into the couch cushions, but they got her in there with minimal disassemblement. The cushions were bleeding through, though, and the bloodstains on the floor were starting to dry a bit. That would be a pain. Maybe he should have just had A-Train clean it up? He could be useful then instead of crying about some used up pussy. Popclaw had probably been fucked by hundreds of men by now, and from what he saw she loved every second of it -- the definition of a used up slut. And A-Train was crying about her.

Looking down at the couch, Homelander felt… something. "I suppose we should say something," he figured. God was a joke. The only man in the sky was him. But funerals were for closure, or so Homelander heard. But… what was there to say? He was coming up blank.

"She did her duty well and while her passing is regrettable, her spirit can rest easy knowing that it will lead to you becoming greater than before. Now, your wings can unfurl and you can fly," Stormfront said, and Homelander stood a little taller.

He liked the sound of that. "Goodbye, Madelyn. I'm off to better things," he told her, picking the couch up and going to throw it through the already fractured window.

However, before he could throw it, he saw a bright flash outside of the window a split second before a massive shockwave rattled the windows of the building. Homelander winced as the shockwave passed through him, his ears ringing. The fractured window shattered and off in the distance, he saw a building in downtown Manhattan begin to collapse.

Heartless.

Homelander sprung into action, flying through the broken window but he was quick to throw the couch off into the ocean where Madelyn would -- hopefully -- never be found. She sailed through the air, clearing the docks, and before she had even touched down with a splash, Homelander was already moving on. He raced towards the scene, his hearing picking up a mess of chaotic panic. A great big plume of dust filled the streets, forcing him to use his X-ray vision to actually see anything.

And what he saw was surprising.

"Oh fuck. That's so fucking good. God, just a little… more…!" A supe gasped out, furiously jacking off on top of a building that overlooked the scene. A supe that he recognized.

Bombastic. A B-lister with the power to imbue energy into items to turn them into bombs. It was an interesting enough power, but not marketing friendly, so he never managed to become someone worth knowing. The only reason that Homelander knew him was because of a briefing about the supes that ran into Heartless. He wore his suit -- flaming red with red tinted goggles shaped like cartoon fire, though his pants were currently around his ankles.

Homelander flew up and with his arrival, Bombastic flinched back and nearly fell off the balcony that he stood on. The middle aged man fell back, his uncapped helmet bouncing off to reveal a massive bald spot and a wispy hairline. "H-homelander! It's… it's not my fault! Heartless made me do it!" He shouted, making Homelander pause.

He tilted his head, going to measure his heart rate to determine if he was lying… only there wasn't a heartbeat to hear. Heartless had taken Bombastic's heart. "He made you do it? Gave you instructions to blow up a building…?" He asked, and blocks away, he could hear the first responders rushing to the scene. This was an escalation. Heartless was a killer, through and through, but toppling a building in New York? There was no way that was anything less than intentional.

In response, Bombastic scrambled for his phone case at his belt, scared limp, and he pulled out a burner phone. Homelander took it, the still damp blood on his gloves smearing the screen when he flipped it open. On the screen, there was only a single text.

'Do every little horrible thing you've always wanted to do, or I'll kill you.'

"He said he'd kill me!" Bombastic exclaimed as Homelander's eyebrows rose high.

"That doesn't read like instructions to blow up a building to me," Homelander remarked. The message was a mass text. He saw that there were more than two dozen numbers. Roughly the same number of supes that had made contact with Heartless.

All of them with their hearts removed.

And some of them… some of them had powers that were… problematic.

"You couldn't have started smaller? Blown up a car? A gas station, maybe?" Homelander prompted, closing the phone in thought.

Evidently not because Bombastic simply gaped at him as if the thought never occurred to him. But that was the point of the message, wasn't it? To make supes feel like they were in danger and use that as an excuse to do the things that they had always wanted to do. Like kill Stan Edgar. Or fly to communist China and level Beijing. Little things that you had a thousand and one reasons to never do and no reasons to actually do.

"I just… I… I could do so much more with these powers, you know?!" Bombastic blurted in defense of himself. "I could be a walking fucking nuke and Vought won't let me be anything more than a God damn hand grenade!"

Homelander smiled, "I understand."

"It's bullshit! I can be so much more than the movie demo- wait, what?" Bombastic managed to catch up as Homelander took a step forward, offering a hand to pick him up. Bombastic hesitantly took it. "You understand?"

"I live in a world of cardboard," Homelander told him as Bombastic pulled his pants up. "Do you have any idea how exhausting that is? I can never hug anyone with all my strength. I can't ever glare at someone without turning on my heat vision. So, I understand. You saw an opportunity and you took it."

Bombastic's fear began to fade as a hesitant smile tugged at his lips. "I… I know it's wrong -- and I made a bomb threat before coming, so there weren't that many people inside… but I… I just always wanted to knock down a skyscraper." He elaborated, feeling comfortable enough to make the admission. Such was the trust that he inspired. "It wasn't quite what I thought it would look like -- I was kind of hoping it'd be more like dominos, but it just fell into itself."

Perfect. "How about a shot at Vought?" Homelander prompted. "I heard about you, you know -- and you're right. You do deserve better than being movie effects. I mean, back before Starlight joined the Seven, I tried to argue your case. I told Vought, 'This guy has a great power, he knows how to use it, and he's perfect for the Seven.' But then they ignored me and added Starlight for their corporate agenda…"

Bombastic gazed at him, "You… you really think I have what it takes to join the Seven."

Honelander performed one of the intimacy gestures corporate taught him and placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "Of course I do. They don't see it, though. Actually, I can tell you exactly who shot me down…" Homelander said, presenting the phone to Bombastic. A clear message.

Bombastic didn't hesitate. Just like he didn't hesitate to grab the phone and imbue it with energy, enough to make it glow orange. Homelander was defined by his self control. He had to be constantly aware of it. And because of that, he saw that lack of control in others.

Homelander winked at him before throwing the explosive phone directly into Madelyn's office, and Bombastic whooped with joy when the building trembled from the force of the explosion that blew out nearly the entire floor. Along with the floor above and below. It didn't collapse, but the cover up was complete. The explosion was clearly caused by Heartless.

"That was amazing-" Bombastic began before Homelander pivoted and punched a hole in his chest, directly through his stomach. And that would take care of the blood on his gloves in case anyone asked. Bombastic gargled on his blood before Homelander ripped his hand free, the corpse falling at his feet. Letting out a content sigh, he looked up at the sky above.

It felt good, Homelander decided. To let his control slip. Madelyn… that was unfortunate. He still felt bad about it, even if Stormfront was right about it being inevitable. But aiming a bomb at Vought? That was just… it was a release that Homelander hadn't been aware that he needed.

And, as if to ruin his moment of reflection, his phone rang with his theme song. Worse, he saw exactly who it was on the caller ID. "What do you want, Stan?" Homelander asked, looking down at the chaos below with his X-ray vision. He saw a number of survivors were trapped under the rubble, but he paid them no mind. When would the camera crew get here? They could hold out until the dust settled, at least. "Because if it's about who blew up the building, I already took care of that."

"How unlike you to show initiative," came Stan's cold reply. "Heartless has made his next move. Our supes are attacking people. They're attacking us."

By unleashing every dark impulse that they had. "He's a terrorist. Terrorizing is what they do," Homelander dismissed with an uncaring shrug of his shoulders.

"I hope I don't need to explain to you how catastrophic this is for the brand?" Stan pressed, a sharp edge in his voice. "This could be the death of the company unless something isn't done." That was probably the closest Homelander had ever heard Stan sound afraid.

It brought a smile to Homelander's face. "And I'm the one doing that something, then?" He ventured, his smile growing a fraction with the pregnant pause on the other end. "Say please."

"You cannot be serious," Stan replied, and edge in his tone.

He shouldn't. He knew that. Stan Edgar was… he was human, but he had soft power. Influence. Homelander knew that he wasn't someone that he could take lightly or treat dismissively. There was going to be a price to pay later, but today… when his grip on his self restraint had already been weakened?

He just couldn't help himself.

"I'm going to need a pretty please now," Homelander dig his heels in and there was another pregnant pause.

"If I must. Will you do your job, pretty please?" Stan replied in the driest voice that Homelander had ever heard. It was music to his ears. A petty, pointless victory but he savored it all the same. Stan was just a human, after all. Humans were weak. Fragile.

Maybe Heartless could kill him too.

"Since you asked so nicely," Homelander replied, a smile in his voice before he hung up. He knew exactly what his role would be -- killing supes. A shame he would be killing his own kind, but it was well worth the trade off. He would be the hero that saved the day and ended this madness. He could expect at least another point boost, especially when he alone would be the brilliantly shining star amongst the throngs of tarnished heroes.

With a smile tugging at his lips, he began to fly. New York was built in a grid, which made it easy to map out. He blasted away from the fallen building, leaving the survivors to their fates in search of another one of Heartless' victims. To that end, he barely made it a block before he found one.

Cold Snap stood in front of a building surrounded by frozen corpses of people attempting to flee from him. A good dozen people. Unlike Bombastic, his expression was one of absolute horror. "I have to!" He screamed at them, to anyone that might hear. "He's-" Cold Snap continued until Homelander descended from the sky, closelining him with enough force to take his head off.

He barely slowed down as he moved on, darting above the streets fast enough to shatter the windows in his wake. He was always so careful to keep things to a reasonable speed, but this was the perfect excuse to cut loose. To let go. To go as fast as he wanted in city limits. So what if he ruptured a few eardrums? People would love him for it -- for being there when they needed him. A few eardrums would be worth the cost.

"Homelander. You hear me right?" Homelander heard a whisper reach his ears. Something that should have been impossible given the speeds that he was moving. Instantly, he came to a stop, looming around for the voice and he realized that it sounded familiar. "Yeah, you hear me."

"Heartless," Homelander growled, looking around with his X-Ray vision to find him. His power had a range, that much they knew, but it seemed to be around five thousand feet. "I take it this is more of your handiwork?"

"Calling it my handiwork feels like too much credit. I'm just giving then an excuse to let loose," Heartless replied, and it sounded as if he was whispering directly into his ear. "Enjoying the show, at least? I know I am. I mean, I expected one or two of them to go buck wild, but you heroes really are a bunch of psychopaths, huh?"

Where was he? "That's rich coming from you," Homelander replied, leaning into his persona. Just in case there were cameras.

"That's fair," Heartless admitted in a tone that was almost casual. "But, then again… do you have any right to say that?" His tone adopted an odd edge that Homelander couldn't quite identify. Almost as if he were sad but resigned at the same time.

"What are you trying to say? Is this about your little spiel to Stormfront?" He questioned, and where the fuck was he?! Heartless' range wasn't that big. Wait… was Heartless switching places? Just out of eyesight? Meaning that if he wanted to find him, he had to look for things out of place, or things that moved in the building around him.

"You aren't a hero, are you?" Heartless asked, and even through the modulated voice, he sounded wistful. "Not a real one. Not like what the movies or comics portray."

Homelander fought off a sneer. "Going to cry about it?" He asked, and he saw a table that was missing a chair. A book bag on the floor.

"Shit, I might have before," Heartless admitted easily. "I idolized you. I wanted to be the one that beat you. You were the one that represented everything right in the world and I wanted to beat you. Now… now I know you're just another corporate shill. Fuck. I think I am tearing up."

Homelander clenched his jaw. A cereal box. A TV… he looked behind him just in time to catch a glimpse of Heartless before he vanished again. Homelander looked behind him again, ready to blast his heat vision through the buildings to get Heartless, but he didn't appear. "What changed?" Homelander asked. As far as he was aware, Heartless was just another groupie. A pain in the ass one, but everything that Heartless did was about him. That was Heartless' one redeeming feature.

"I suppose I did. I realized I was putting some unrealistic expectations on you and clinging to them despite all the evidence shoved in my face. So, sorry about that," Heartless said and Homelander really couldn't get a read on him now. Heartless, for better or worse, was like him. He exuded showmanship. He was bright star in a dark sky, and as far as Homelander was concerned, Heartless was trying to steal his spotlight. This… apology… he didn't know what to make of it. "Maybe I'll find what I'm looking for one day, but it was wrong of me to expect you to be everything I wanted you to be."

A small disbelieving laugh escaped him, "Are you breaking up with me?" Homelander asked, a laugh in his voice. "Are you really giving me the 'It's not you, it's me' speech right now?"

"Ah… yeah, I guess I am," Heartless seemed to realize it himself, a laugh in his own voice.

His villain broke up with him. What the fuck. "So, what now? You're done? Going to hang up the cape?" Homelander asked, trying to sort out how he felt. Slighted was the first word that came to mind. Heartless had been driving him up the walls for weeks, doing everything that he could to drag him through the mud, and now he just… broke up with him. Taylor Swift songs made more sense now.

"Nah. Being evil is fun," Heartless told him without a hint of shame. "At the very least, I'm going to fuck Stan Edgar's life up." That caught Homelander's attention.

"He's on the verge of a heart attack. His blood might as well be oil," Homelander remarked.

"Oh, really? I think I know just the thing to give him one," Heartless replied with a sinister chuckle.

This was weird, Homelander decided. Very weird. So weird that he wasn't entirely sure how to describe it. What words could articulate the feeling of finding common ground with someone you were convinced you hated? Perhaps it was simply the mood, or his grip on his self control had loosened enough, but… he found himself asking a question he never dared to say out loud. "How do you do it? The entire world hates you. How can you put up with that?"

That was unthinkable to Homelander. It was… a weak part of himself. A human part of himself. A part of himself that he wished he could cut out like the cancer that it was, but he never could. He loved the attention. He loved the praise. He loved it when he was worshiped like the God he was.

And Heartless was the antithesis to that. He was vilified. There wasn't anyone in this world that had a single good thing to say about him and Heartless seemed to thrive off of it.

There was a pause and Homelander realized he had stopped looking for Heartless, simply hovering in the air. All around him were signs of chaos and disorder. Hopefully, people wouldn't take this out of context if anyone was recording.

Then Heartless answered.

"It's just people's opinions. What do they matter? The only opinion I'm concerned with is mine. And the only opinion you should be concerned with is yours, Homelander." The whisper reached his ears and Homelander knew that Heartless was gone by the time he heard the words. But he didn't move.

Instead, he smiled.

The only opinion in the world that mattered was his own…?

He liked the sound of that.