FORGERY . . . THE BOYS ! [1]

twelve.

. . . 2022 . . .

"Can I ask you something," Ben starts slowly, his fingertips trailing down Brooke's back featherlight, "or are you going to do that thing you do?"

Dangerous question already. Luckily, he loves playing dangerous games.

As expected, she lifts her head off of his chest to glare right at him. He even gets an irritated nose scrunch. "Well, ask it."

A little laugh rumbles in his chest. His fingers are still trailing down, down, they reach her fingers and give a little squeeze. They still continue down, where her arms wrap around her stomach. There. That's where he stops.

She tenses.

His theory was right.

"What do you not want me to see?" Ben asks softly, shifting the both of them a little so that she sits taller in his lap. Brooke is more relaxed with just the both of them, it'd always been that way, yet now, she's retreating into herself. Even with him. Maybe even especially with him. He feels sick, something turning his stomach inside out. "Is it something that happened in the labs?"

"Ben–" Brooke's hands are shaking. Now he sits taller too. He doesn't understand, he wants to understand so badly. But what can he do? "Please, please just drop it."

Ben's shaking his head, though, because he was never able to drop things. Not when it came to her and her tears. She wasn't crying now but she did before, cried because of whatever she hid beneath that suit, cried because she wasn't showing him, and, well, it was kind of part of his charm to be pushy.

"You said that I promised to keep you safe, and that I lied about it," he tries, his fingertips so soft on her stomach that he can hardly feel the fabric but, there's a scar there, isn't there? A scar. She doesn't scar. He doesn't. They don't. They don't die. They don't age. They don't– "Brooke, what–"

The door to the hotel's bedroom bursts open. Brooke is all too happy then at the intrusion this time, much to Ben's dismay. Hughie stands between the base of the bed and the entrance of the room, a look of horror spreading on his face.

"Oh God," he's starting, but Ben's already starting to wave him off.

Brooke smiles so wide that it looks physically painful. "Hi, Hughie."

"Oh God," Hughie closes his eyes, shakes his head, "not making eye contact, just– Food's here."

Brooke hops off of Ben's laugh like his skin burns her. Stretches out her limbs, avoids Ben's gaze entirely.

Hughie's already trying to inconspicuously back out of the room when Ben shouts after him, "Do you have a change of clothes?"

Ben would smile if his chest didn't feel so heavy, at the way Hughie actually recoils.

"Yeah. Yeah, we'll get you some new clothes."

He knows.

Brooke gave Ben her second burger, barely having the appetite for her first with that knowledge on her mind and everything else on her shoulders, just as she expected. But she couldn't look at him. Couldn't look at any of them. They talked hunting down Payback. They are feeding him drugs and alcohol along with the excess food.

She wants none of it.

She refuses to listen to their plans. She is not part of it.

He knows, he knows, he knows.

And if he knows about her, then there is no point in not including her in the pact he's setting up with these two odd little vigilantes.

"–you'll take down Homelander?"

"On those conditions."

Brooke looks up. She meets Hughie's gaze first, who for once, doesn't cower at all. He's so serious, so painfully hopeful, that it makes her heart clench.

"One more condition," Brooke says softly, and though her voice flutters and dances, she has never meant anything more than she does this.

Ben's hand reaches under the table. Takes hers. He watches her face curiously, and maybe he doesn't know, not really, but he know enough that it's time that he hear it all.

Butcher tilts his head back. "Name your price, darling."

Brooke gulps. She's already bitten the bullet. Now it's time to swallow. "You have to find our daughter."