Homelander didn't understand what Superman was saying.
He didn't want to.
He had grown up inside Vought's walls and joined The Seven young. In all that time, Madelyn had given him a very specific framework for what he was. Not a hero—a god. Pure, perfect, supreme. Those were her words, repeated to him over decades in different variations. They formed the standard he was supposed to embody, the image he was supposed to project, and the identity he was supposed to believe was real.
Yet, he had always carried a confusion he couldn't quite pinpoint. Madelyn told him to be pure and perfect, but placed no limits on what he did when the cameras were off. She told him to be supreme, but expected him to obey Vought's schedules, arrangements, and corporate strategies. She told him to be a hero, but never allowed him meaningful contact with ordinary people. She kept him at a distance, like a luxury item in a display case—beautiful, untouchable, and curated for maximum effect.
He had been trying to reconcile those contradictions for thirty years.
Clark's voice kept going behind him. With every word, the red cape became more irritating to look at. Superman had taken the mayor off the table, and Homelander had no desire to float in the clouds listening to a lecture about the courage of ordinary people. He turned and flew toward the Vought building without another word.
More than not understanding, he refused to understand. Clark was systematically rejecting the last three decades of Homelander's life—the framework Madelyn had provided, the identity he had been handed, the entire architecture of his existence. Children rarely respond well when an adult tells them everything they know is wrong. The personality Madelyn had cultivated in Homelander over thirty years hadn't developed much past that stage.
Superman is a complete idiot, Homelander thought as he crossed the city.
I've done more for Vought than anyone. I am the most successful superhero in the world. I am exactly what they built me to be—a god—and I know exactly what ordinary people are.
I should be above every single one of them. Those executives on the eighty-second floor, with their suits, their degrees, and their little pieces of paper proving they sat in a classroom—they use me like an appliance. What makes them different from regular people? Nothing. Nothing except a glass building that gives them the illusion of authority.
They should answer to me. Not the other way around.
This wasn't a new line of thinking. It had been running in the background for years, and lately, it was getting louder. It was adolescent rebellion arriving in a body that had missed its developmental window, surfacing late and far too large. A normal rebellious teenager might run away from home. Homelander could cut a commercial aircraft in half with a stare.
He still didn't believe he had done anything wrong.
Madelyn's message arrived the next morning. Come upstairs. Now.
The moment he stepped into her office and saw her face, the righteous anger he had carried all night vanished. He had never learned how to hold his ground with her. She occupied a space in his mind that didn't follow normal logic, and she knew it. She used it the way she used everything—with precision.
"Steve called me this morning." Her smile was tight, the look of a school principal who had just pulled a student into her office. "He wanted to thank me for sending Homelander to escort his flight."
Homelander looked at the floor.
If Clark hadn't been there, he might have tried to deny it, or at least stall with vague excuses. But he had failed, Clark had seen it, and the surviving target had called Madelyn to say thank you. There was no way to spin it favorably.
"Were you escorting him?"
"I heard him through the wall. He was threatening you."
"And what exactly were you going to do? Kill him?"
"I did it for you."
"I know you did." Her expression softened slightly, but her tone remained sharp. "But you know what tonight is."
The Senate dinner. The Appropriations Committee. The event this entire week had been building toward. He knew.
He stayed silent. He was tired of being scolded. He shifted his weight. "How did he know about Compound V?"
"That is not something I am going to discuss with you."
"Why not?" The words came out hotter than he meant them to. "I love Vought as much as you do. I can do more for it than you can. I deserve to know."
"What you have already done," Madelyn said, letting her voice drop into the warm, comforting tone she used when she needed him to yield, "is extraordinary. Do you know what Vought made last year? Twelve billion dollars. That number exists because of you."
"And every dollar went upstairs," Homelander shot back. "Every dollar, every award, all the credit. They left me the scraps, the royalties, the promotional cuts, and I'm supposed to be grateful."
"I know. I know it doesn't feel fair."
"Put on the cape. Say the lines. Look heroic. That's all I'm for, isn't it?" The bitterness in his voice surprised him. He had finally said the quiet part out loud, and it sounded worse than it had in his head. "That's what I'm best at."
He felt it sharply in that moment—the sensation of being a tool. And it came from the one person who was supposed to make him feel like he was more. That was the worst part. Madelyn was supposed to be different.
"All you have to do," she said softly, "is let me protect you."
He looked at her.
"Will you protect me?"
"I always have." She reached out and touched his cheek. Her hand was light and deliberate, a gesture she had used since he was young enough to learn what comfort meant. "As long as you listen to me, I can give you everything they need to believe you are. Pure. Perfect. Supreme."
He looked into her eyes. The familiar haze washed over him again—a knot of safety, admiration, confusion, and a possessiveness he couldn't name and couldn't resolve. It made him smile. It always made him smile.
If he had been a teenager, a professional might have recognized the stunted emotional development and known how to treat it. But he was in his thirties, nobody had ever diagnosed it, and it had been controlling him for a very long time.
His gaze dropped to her chest.
Meanwhile
"We need to deal with him as soon as possible."
The black car wove through the morning traffic. Butcher drove with the aggressive, jerky velocity of a man who treated traffic the way others treated a punching bag. He was wearing a fresh coat—his old one was in a dumpster somewhere—and his face showed no visible signs of last night's fight, but his mood was heavy.
"Vought chips every one of The Seven," Butcher said. "They all carry a tracker. We stashed him in the basement last night, but that won't hold. The signal goes dark, or the wrong timestamp registers, and Vought starts looking. We need someone who can solve this problem."
Jude yawned in the passenger seat. "Someone who can remove the chip?"
"Someone who can kill the Invisible Man."
"No." Jude shook his head. "Not yet."
The tires squealed in protest. Butcher slammed on the brakes, pulling over to the curb with far more force than necessary.
"Right." Butcher turned in his seat. "If that's how it is, get out. Take your Invisible Man with you. I'll come scrape up whatever's left of you after Homelander tracks the signal." His tone was flat, offering a serious promise. "Shouldn't take long."
"That won't work either." Jude looked out the window, perfectly calm, as if he had expected this exact reaction. "Do you remember the deal we made in the basement? You work with me, and we take down Vought. I handle Translucent, and I get you out of the mess he put you in."
Jude turned to look at him.
"You've been rescued. I took care of Translucent. In exchange—you are my cannon fodder."