"Born To Be Yours"
When Hughie charged over to beat up A-Train, Butcher didn't move.
He leaned against the convenience store's glass door, shifting the unlit cigarette in his mouth from left to right.
He watched A-Train kneel on the ground as Hughie punched out one of his teeth, then watched that tooth bounce into the sewer.
He watched Hughie pant with his fists clenched, as if he wanted to pound a lifetime's hatred into that rotten face.
He saw every one of those satisfying moments, but his eyes kept straying warily to the left, watching the man leaning beside the Ford's hood.
As it happened, that man was watching him too, across an entire sidewalk, hands in his pockets and posture loose, looking like a laid-back young guy.
Interesting...
Butcher took the cigarette out of his mouth, rolled the filter twice between his thumb and forefinger, then walked toward him.
His strides weren't long. The hot midday breeze lifted a corner of his trench coat, offering a glimpse of his trusty crowbar at his waist.
Butcher had deliberately put on that menacing air, but to his surprise, the other man didn't even bother standing up straight.
That meant one thing.
Either the man was an idiot who thought the world was at peace, or he had something stronger to rely on.
Butcher leaned toward the second possibility.
Soon, he stopped in front of the man, head tilted and chin slightly raised, an ugly, half-roguish grin on his lips.
"Oi."
Butcher stuck the cigarette back into the corner of his mouth and pointed with his chin at A-Train, who was still kneeling on the street corner, beaten so badly by Hughie that even his mother wouldn't recognize him.
"Those wounds on him. Your work? You a supe?"
Butcher sounded as if he were making conversation, but his eyes honestly betrayed his caution, never straying half an inch from John's mask.
He stared at the mask for a few seconds, then tilted his head, the corners of his mouth lifting a little higher.
"Know what that kid told me last night? Said he'd make A-Train kneel in the street and apologize. Thought he was talking out of his arse."
He took the cigarette out of his mouth and pointed its tip at Hughie, who was still panting across the street.
"But guess what? His fists were shaking when he charged in to beat him up.
Know what he was like the first time he killed someone? Crouched by the roadside puking for a full fifteen minutes. Even brought up bile."
"If you want Hughie to kill A-Train, you've probably backed the wrong horse."
Butcher took the cigarette from the corner of his mouth and flicked off the ash with his thumb, his gaze fixed on the blue eyes behind the mask's eyeholes.
"Also... mind telling me who exactly you are...? Don't remember our little Hughie having a friend like you."
As he spoke, the hand in Butcher's pocket had already tightened around the crowbar's grip.
He was waiting for John's answer, and for John to show his hand. One wrong word, and he would swing the crowbar into his face without hesitation.
That's called striking first, fucking hell.
"Just a deal. Each of us gets what we need. Aren't you satisfied with it?"
"Oh? So you know it's a deal. But keeping secrets isn't what a good partner does, is it...?"
Butcher narrowed his eyes as he spoke, watching the blue eyes through the mask's eyeholes.
Then, without warning, one hand shot up, seized the mask's lower edge, and ripped it upward.
Snap!
The mask's elastic strap broke.
With a roguish grin, Butcher widened his eyes, eager to see what conspiracy lay hidden beneath that damned mask.
What sort of person had to hide his excitement even when he went out?
Come on out!
As the shadow vanished, a handsome face beneath the mask gradually emerged in the sunlight.
Blond hair, blue eyes, a clean jawline, no older than twenty, with a few almost invisible freckles across his nose.
But... that fucking face!
He knew that face far too well.
He had stared at it countless times on television, countless times in surveillance screenshots from the Vought Security Department.
On those sleepless nights, he had pinned that face to the warehouse blackboard and drawn crosses over it in red, again and again.
The animal who stood in the middle of The Seven smiling at the cameras, the bastard draped in the American flag looking down on everyone from a Times Square billboard.
It was that same fucking face.
Even if this face was impossibly young and looked vastly different from the old image in his memory.
"Homelander!"
The corners of his mouth jerked upward, his lips peeling back to expose tobacco-yellowed teeth. His nostrils flared violently as he breathed hard through his nose like an enraged bull.
"Fucking-knew it! I fucking knew it!"
Butcher's hoarse voice exploded, his Adam's apple bobbing, saliva spraying from the corner of his mouth as he whipped toward Hughie.
"See that? Same face! It's him! This is a fucking Vought trap!"
He drew a breath, his chest heaving, then his voice exploded again, higher and more cracked this time, until the second half became a roar.
"He played all of us!"
Hughie stood blankly a few steps away, his whole body seemingly nailed in place, his knees trembling.
It was an uncontrollable trembling that seeped out from deep in his bones.
He had only just beaten up a member of The Seven. A-Train's blood and tooth fragments still clung to his fists, and his heart, stifled for months, was still pounding from that moment of release.
But now, he looked at the torn mask in Butcher's hand, then at the face beneath it, identical to the one on that Times Square billboard.
We're screwed... we're really screwed!
"Don't be afraid, Hughie."
Butcher spat on the ground, then reached into his trench coat's inner pocket and drew his crowbar.
Its head was worn shiny, its handle wrapped in nonslip tape. It looked as though it had seen more than one use.
"Don't care if you're a clone or took some fucking drug that shrank you. Same face is the same face.
There's only one thing I believe in!"
Butcher raised the crowbar, his knuckles white around it, his furious eyes wide.
"Every Homelander has to fucking die."
Butcher gave John no time to react. The crowbar whistled through the air, carrying his entire weight and half a lifetime of hatred as he smashed it down at John's head.
But John had no intention of dodging.
The crowbar struck his left cheek, iron hitting skull with a dull thud whose bass reverberated through bone.
Clang-
Butcher nearly lost his grip, the recoil numbing the web of his hand. He could feel the full force of the blow travel through the bar into John's skull.
He waited for the sound of a cheekbone shattering, for half that face to cave in, for blood to spurt from his ear.
He couldn't wait.
But it never came.
John's head didn't even turn. He merely tilted his neck slightly, as though a twig had brushed against him.
Butcher froze for a moment, then raised the crowbar again and brought it down.
This time, the crowbar paid attention to more places, striking his ribs, his shoulder, his neck.
The whole street fell silent except for the dull thuds of the crowbar hitting flesh and Butcher's own panting.
"Nice massage... had your fun?"
Expression indifferent, John simply reached out, grabbed Butcher's collar, lifted him clear off the ground, then casually hurled him against the convenience store's outer wall.
Whump-
The next second, Butcher's back slammed into the brick wall, instantly squeezing the air from his lungs.
He opened his mouth to breathe in, but his diaphragm seemed to have cramped. He couldn't draw any air.
Before he could fall from the wall, something whistled through the air. Only an afterimage remained where John had stood; his actual hand was already clamped around Butcher's throat, pinning him to the wall.
Then a fist slammed into Butcher's abdomen.
"Urgh-"
Butcher doubled over as though electrocuted, stomach acid surging up his throat.
Mixed with the cheap whiskey from last night and the acid in his stomach, empty from skipping breakfast, it sprayed from his mouth and nostrils at once.
John remembered.
It had been a long time since he had recalled his previous life, the abject helplessness and humiliation before his death.
And Butcher's hideous, demonic face.
His most cherished cape with a torn corner, blood at his lips, Butcher behind him raising a crowbar and bringing it down-the scene exploded straight from the depths of his memory, blasting through eighteen years of reason.
At that thought, a red glow, crimson as heated iron, involuntarily flared in John's eyes.
"..."
He grabbed Butcher's hair, twisted his head to the side, and drove his right fist into his cheekbone from the side.
Crack...
Butcher's nose broke with the sound, blood instantly bursting from his nostrils and splattering the brick wall.
The second punch landed on his lips. His lower lip split down the middle, the tear extending to his gums and turning outward to expose a patch of tender oral lining.
After taking two punches from John, Butcher's face was already smeared with blood. He opened his mouth to say something, but only gurgles came from his throat, clogged with bloody froth.
"Stop! You'll kill him!"
Hughie finally made his decision. Gritting his teeth, he charged forward.
Then he grabbed John's right arm and pulled backward with every ounce of strength he had, digging his fingernails into the leather jacket's sleeve.
"Stop!"
Hughie's exhausted arms trembled, but he found that John's arm wouldn't budge, like a steel pillar welded in place. Even when his feet slipped against the brick paving, he couldn't loosen it a fraction.
John turned to look at him. The two red lights in his eyes were exceptionally bright, boiling like magma deep within his pupils, clearly visible even with the midday sun still high overhead.
"Get lost."
John kept his voice so low that Hughie could barely hear him, but the warning was already unmistakable.
But Hughie couldn't let go. He was committed now. Butcher had helped him; he couldn't die here.
"Stubborn fool."
The muscles in John's right arm tightened in that instant, and he flung it outward. The movement was small, but the force was tremendous.
The next second, Hughie was shaken off his arm and sent flying, both feet leaving the ground before his back hit the newspaper rack outside the convenience store.
The metal rack collapsed with a crash, scattering newspapers and advertising flyers across the ground.
Hughie lay sprawled in the wreckage, the back of his head striking the sidewalk bricks. His vision went dark, his ears filled with buzzing.
"It's not that I don't dare kill you. I'm keeping you alive because you're still useful."
He flung Butcher's head hard toward the ground. The back of Butcher's head struck the brick wall, then his whole body slid down it, the rough red bricks along the joints scraping white streaks into his trench coat.
"Phew-"
After venting, John calmed down a little.
Having lived two lives, he had become much steadier, unlike in his previous life, when any problem called for permanently and humanely exterminating the target, complete with the God-brand whole-family package.
Besides, he had held back when he hit him. Otherwise, Butcher would already have been a puddle of meat.
John wasn't stupid. His main quest in coming back this time was to seize the Power of the World and keep Jonathan alive.
And while killing Butcher would let him seize some of the Power of the World, Butcher clearly didn't carry the greatest weight in this world.
Moreover, after Butcher died, many events would veer out of control from their original course.
That was something John didn't want to see.
Revenge was one thing, but Jonathan's life was clearly far more precious than these bastards'.
At that thought, John crouched, grabbed Butcher's hair, and lifted his face off the step.
Blood dripped from Butcher's face, mixed with brick dust and debris. Its original contours were no longer recognizable.
His nose was crooked to one side, his left eye socket swollen into a purplish-black walnut. His lips were peeled open, exposing blood-soaked gums and several loose teeth.
"Let me go-"
Butcher barely forced the words through his teeth, saliva splashing onto the bricks. He wanted to say something filthier, but John had already pressed down on the back of his neck, squeezing his voice into a thin thread.
"If I hear anything I don't like coming out of that filthy mouth of yours... I don't mind killing you right here."
"Cough... then kill me right here. Daddy'll be waiting for you in hell, you bastard."
"I only came to make a deal."
At Butcher's words, a barely noticeable vein rose on John's forehead.
If not for Jonathan, he really wanted to crush this idiot who kept prancing around in front of him.
"I'd never deal with a bastard like you-"
"Becca's still alive."
Those few words made Butcher go still.
His back was still heaving, but his struggles stopped. As his brain processed those words, every other system in his body was forcibly paused.
The root of his hatred, all his obsession, came from that name that haunted his soul and dreams.
His dead wife, Becca.
"What the fuck did you say?"
"Becca Butcher. That's her name, right? He's your wife, listed as dead in Vought's security system. File number RC-884. Date of death, March 17, 2012.
But that file's fake. She's still alive, and she's doing pretty well."
John released the hand pressing on the back of Butcher's neck and stepped back.
Butcher turned over with difficulty and pushed himself up from the ground, leaning against the brick wall, his chest heaving.
He stared fixedly into John's eyes, searching those eyes, which had changed from red back to blue, for any trace of a lie.
But John's eyes told him.
This was a fact, one he had waited who knew how many years for, one he had been unable to pry from any source at Vought.
"Where is she?"
"In Vought's hands."
"More precisely, at Red River, a secret safe house. Not a prison. An apartment.
There's a living room, a kitchen, a TV, and drawings by Becca and Ryan stuck to the fridge."
"Ryan?"
"Oh, your son. He's eight this year."
John hadn't told Butcher who Ryan really was, partly because he was afraid this hyena would go berserk again, and partly because he'd long since given up on this son.
He'd been good to him without holding anything back, laid his heart bare and told him his most painful secrets. It wouldn't have mattered who else he betrayed, but he'd betrayed John.
And more than once.
What would be left after fifty years?
So John didn't want to accept it, and couldn't accept it.
Better to leave this problem to Butcher and let him deal with the headache himself.
"I've already offered you my deal. I only need you to do one thing for me."
"You bastard... who the hell are you? You're definitely not Homelander. He's not this smart."
"If you don't answer, I'll take that as a yes."
"..."
"So, who's Becca?"
Hughie, who'd gotten up off the ground long ago, first felt relieved when he saw John "temporarily" let Butcher off, only to hear an unfamiliar name.
Butcher had never mentioned that name. Hughie had been with him all this time, stuffed C4 up Translucent's ass, and helped him cover the warehouse in photos of Vought executives and draw red lines between them.
But he'd never heard Butcher mention anyone whose name could put that look on his face.
Butcher propped himself up with the crowbar and stood, his ribs stabbing with pain every time he breathed in.
His nose was broken, his lip split, his left eye swollen to a slit, and the nail on his left ring finger had been smashed back at some point during the punches-he didn't know which one.
Now he really couldn't stand.
He could only sit on the convenience store steps, watching through blood-caked eyes as John drove the gray Ford away around the street corner.
Then there was A-Train, kneeling at the corner, followed by Hughie, who limped over to his side.
Hughie looked at him and was silent for a moment.
"So who's Becca? You never told me you had a wife. You never told me you had a son, either."
"I only just fucking found out myself."
Butcher wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. It flowed again after he wiped it, and he wiped it again after it flowed.
He pulled his cigarette pack from his pocket, wanting a smoke, only to find that his own ribs had long since dented the pack and every cigarette inside was broken.
"So, Hughie... did he tell you what his terms were?"