FORGERY . . . THE BOYS ! [1]

four.

. . . 2022 . . .

Billy is such a stupid nickname for William. It's the only thing that Brooke can think of while she's being stormed down streets with flashing lights and blasting music and all-too-much PDA of all kinds. That billboard's picture changed three times in a minute, one of them even playing sound. It was why she started to fixate on William.

Because she was going fucking mental in the real world. She had to be. Small price to pay for waking up.

"Look alive," Butcher says, opening a door to a vehicle for her. It's unlike anything she's ever seen. Sleeker, smaller, condensed. She bets this one could go 80 easily. That thought thrills her.

"What a gentleman you are, William," Brooke hums, sliding into the backseat next to a very uncomfortable looking Hughie. He offers her a one handed, two finger salute in his lap.

William gets into the driver's seat and wastes no time getting their rag tag murder crew on the road. They're running late, he says! What if Soldier Boy's got Crimson Countess blasted to smithereens in her little monkey cage, chunks spewed everywhere and blood coating the window of every surrounding house?

She didn't have much to say to that. Only a simple good that earned her a shove out of the door. No longer bound but still prompted for manhandling. Did they really forget that she was now invincible? Literally invincible. And with laser eyes.

"Did you want this back?" Hughie asks from next to her, even his voice riddled with so much anxiety that he was practically perspiring it. In his hand was the crystal that she crafted inside. Her little angry lovechild.

She plucked it from his palm, careful not to touch his hand in case she gave him a spook. "I used to make these at least three times a day. I started to just toss them to people in rallies and gatherings. And then I started to pelt them. Like a game. Three in a row, Soldier Boy would bend me over the podium after the cameras stopped rolling."

Brooke dropped the crystal back into Hughie's open palm, though he still flinched. Everything scared boys like him. Impossible to please.

Surprisingly, it does not riddle him silent. He holds the crystal in his palm like it contains a virus, a fierce grimace pulled tightly on his lips, but he studies her carefully. Threat assessing.

"You were the side piece?" He asks, and what a terrible question that is to settle on. Of all of them?

Brooke's eyes don't flare, but they flash. A vibrant flash of pink against the dark leather of the passenger seat's backside.

"Do you want to hear a story, Hugh?"

"I think you're going to tell me regardless of what I say," Hughie breathed out, "and so I'm going to say yes, and pray I keep my testicles."

"Vought-American is only just now starting to control everything. It's an empire in the works. People trust it, they love it. They eat it and they shit it out, breakfast, lunch, dinner. But it's a very weary line that we all walk," Brooke's stare is so vacant and distant, reciting this same speech that was told to her what was two years ago in her head, decades in actuality, "and we need to not scare them."

Hughie's mouth opens and closes like a dying fish. "I don't–"

"Shut the fuck up and listen then," she snaps, stung by the memory but desperate to get lost in it all the same. It's so familiar. Everything else she's living isn't. Why can't everything else feel as safe as what the things she knew before? "We need to not scare them, Rose. Do you understand? The most powerful Hero of our time, and the most powerful woman Hero of our time. They can't be together. Not in the public. They will see it as a threat. They will feel it is a stance. A stance against the foundation we are building. Do you understand what we're saying, Rose?"

Of course, Soldier Boy did not get this speech. It was put onto her shoulders to relay this information to him in the form of Two Options. Option One, the preferred one for Vought. We need to not see each other anymore, Ben. It isn't working. I know you just fucked me against the Humvee. I swear it's true. Option Two, the preferred one for Brooke. Vought says we're too powerful to ever be together publicly, so we have to be together privately. You're going to have to date the Crimson Countess in public. If you ever touch her for real, you will lose your entire dick. Incinerated.

"That's a tragic story you've got there, darling," Butcher announced from the front seat, interrupting her delve into her memories. "But there are bigger Vought fish to fry than them keeping you and the Soldier apart."

Brooke rolled her eyes, but she kept her mouth shut. It wasn't worth arguing with people that didn't listen. They hardly ever did and it was hardly worth her time. Why did you think she pelted rocks at people's heads? It wasn't just for amusement.

"I think it's shitty," Hughie says, long after the moment passed. The seconds had hung heavy for too long. The air was thick with the remnants of her grief. "What they did. What they do. The media training is... shit."

She reaches out to pat a hand on his shoulder, and to his credit, he doesn't even flinch. Progress! "I don't know what media is. Or why you train for it. But if it's Vought related, I'm sure you're right."

He stares at her for a long, long minute. Too long. The seconds tick like bombs.

Then, horror sinks into his scrawny face. "Oh, god."