Sarah stood at the door, her hand lingering on the frame as the last of the guests filed out. Her parents had offered to stay, their eyes full of heavy, suffocating pity, but she had turned them away. She needed to be alone with her ghost.
Michael was gone.
She sat at the breakfast table, the same place he'd slid the tablet toward her just days ago, and broke down. The livestream played on a loop in her head. She'd seen how he died.
She'd seen the car flip, the brutal, violent rotation that should have killed him instantly. But Michael was always so determined. Even with his body broken and the asphalt painting him red, he'd crawled for her and his "little Supe."
"Please... my wife..."
Seeing those words on the screen, knowing his last conscious thought was of her while that golden-haired thing stood over him, broke her ten times over. If Michael wasn't a superhuman for crawling through that hell just to say her name, then the word has no meaning.
Sarah looked at the video Michael used to shove in her face: the Homelander meltdown. She used to hate it, but now, staring at the grainy footage, she felt something sharper than hate.
Why do they exist?
Why does the world allow things that can kill you in a blink and look down on you like you're less than an ant? To them, Michael wasn't a husband or a father-to-be. He was just empty air.
She placed a trembling hand on her belly, feeling the life he would never get to meet. He wanted a "little Supe." He wanted a hero. Sarah looked at the empty chair across from her and whispered to the quiet room, "I hope you're human. I hope you're just a boy."
KNOCK
KNOCK
KNOCK
Sarah was jolted out of her thoughts by a knock. It was sharp, rhythmic, and entirely too late for a guest. She breathed in, assuming it was a neighbor or a straggler from the funeral, and shouted, "I'm coming!" as she hurried to wipe the tear tracks from her face.
She pulled the door open, but the polite greeting died in her throat.
Standing on her porch was her greatest and most unexpected nightmare. The same golden-haired thing that had taken Michael from her was standing right there, staring at her with those serene, blue eyes.
He was carrying a heavy black bag and looked completely unbothered, as if he'd come to her door to sell cookies instead of to visit the woman he'd made a widow and the child he'd orphaned.
The silence between them was a physical weight, broken only by the sound of the wind. Aldrich didn't look like a monster; he just looked like a child who had outgrown his clothes.
"You must be Sarah. I'm Aldrich. I killed your husband recently."
Sarah felt the air leave her lungs, her legs turning to water as the world tilted. But he wasn't done. He stood there, holding that black bag.
"May I come in to talk?" he asked, his voice flat and terrifyingly polite. "I brought gifts."
Sarah clutched the door frame so hard her knuckles turned white, the only thing keeping her from collapsing into a heap on the porch. Her brain was a mess of short-circuiting wires.
He's here to finish it.
The realization was cold and heavy. She couldn't outrun him. She couldn't hide behind a wooden door from a thing that ripped a car in half. There was no escape. No help was coming in time.
The only road to survival, for her and the life growing inside her, was to be the perfect, calm hostess for a monster.
"Ple... Please... Come in."
Stepping inside, Aldrich simply closed the door behind him, waiting for her to lead the way. Sarah broke the awkward silence, guiding him into the living room where Michael's memory still felt fresh in the air.
"Can I bring you something to drink or eat?" she asked, her voice trembling as she fell back on the only hospitality she knew.
"No, thank you. I won't stay here for long," Aldrich said, his voice flat as he looked around the room. "I'm just here to talk."
"Oh... you won't stay for long? Then... please, have a seat."
Aldrich sat. He looked at the room, then back at her. "I came here to talk to you about your husband."
"Mi... Michael?" Sarah's voice was a thin, fragile thing. "What about him?"
"Well, I was really curious about what could be worth fighting so hard for," Aldrich said, his voice flat and resonant. "Did you know he intentionally flipped the car? He did it just to have a chance of escaping me."
"Uh..." The sound was a sob that didn't have the room to come out. Tears ran uncontrollably down her cheeks, her voice choking between grief and terror. She fought to control it, to stay quiet, to not die. "No... I didn't....know."
"So, I wondered what could be worth fighting so hard for," Aldrich continued, his blue eyes fixed on her face, unblinking. "I had to see it for myself."