Butterflies Volume II

Chapter 23

"where's Soldier Boy?" Billy wondered as he walked into the room.

Hughie sat alone in The Legends living room, staring at his plate of pizza rolls. Billy could sit and pretend he didn't see the tissue he had in his hand, or the gunk coming out his ears. Violet's warning rang in his mind, hand in hand with the desperate need to see her. He wanted to listen to her, everything told him to follow her word. But they were so close, they were so close to getting Homelander.

"You mean, ever since he told us he was supposed to kill his own son?" Hughie raised the tissue back to his ear, "he locked himself in the bathroom with a bottle of Old Granddad."

"Well Homelander ain't really his son, and he knows it."

They were so close, but a revelation opened up that took a downer on it all. It had to be in favour of Homelander, if he was able to play the doting son. As Soldier Boy walked into the room pouring coke into milk, Billy was slightly surprised he didn't see it soon. They both had the same blonde hair and blue eyes destined to be America's hero. They had the same arrogance, the same sense of importance above what was necessarily true. Knowing he was related to Homelander just made him hate him even more.

"All right let's be off then, eh?" Billy said, "we'll swing by the office and grab some more V."

It stung just to say it, and he thought of Violet's reaction, but they were so close. He couldn't back down, he could see the finish line.

"Then Hughie will jump us to where the cunts are. We do Noir and Homelander. And we're finished. Right?"

Soldier Boy said nothing, he turned and walked away giving Billy no piece of mind on if he would kill Homelander. Partly it didn't matter, because he still had Violet. However if Soldier Boy ended up going to Homelander and the two protecting each other, they had no chance. They were so close but with so little time to execute their mission. 3-5 doses of Temp V is lethal, and Billy knew he had taken enough to be in that danger zone. He would put himself in that danger though, if it meant Homelander was dead and everyone was safe. They didn't give him enough credit, because he did care, he cared about them all. He knew that it was mostly his doing getting them where they were, so if he could undo that, would that fix everything?

He didn't want Lenny to be right, even if he likely was. He wanted to prove that he could save people and not let them die, by putting himself in their place. There was no such thing as a good or bad person when it came to Billy, he was just trying his best. Violet brought out the best in him, and he wanted to save that. There was no them with Homelander alive, they could never be what he wanted so dearly if he didn't complete the mission.

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Violet sat with M.M. in his living room as he fiddled with one of his daughters dolls. If she was allowed Violet wouldn't be sat so stiffly, but she knew how M.M. felt about feet on the sofa. There wasn't much she had to say, the two of them so poised in an awkward silence that you couldn't breathe under. He didn't approve of her and Billy, he didn't approve of her saying she loved him. And up until that point, she had never used the word so to use it so decisively shocked even her. Violet had never told anyone she loved them before, it wasn't in her vocabulary, and even if she hadn't told it to Billy yet she felt the weight in her chest lift as if she had. Without her knowing she had become like the women she reads in romance novels, and love was becoming consuming again.

She knew it was certain then, when she felt a swell for just saying the word love. It was so juvenile, it was so far from anything she associated with herself. A couple years ago she would have scrunched her face up to the idea of love. It was foreign to her, the one thing she would never afford. Though that was a time in which she was all alone, when she didn't even have friends or anyone to contact. In the matter of almost two years she had suddenly become human, she had suddenly accepted the Supe side of herself and accepted that she can love with it. There was no longer the idea of one or the other, or neither at all. She could have both. She could experience love.