Reacting to what Ryan said wouldn't work. At least not in the way that either Billy or I would naturally do. Instead, I asked him to explain which of his powers he'd asked for them to inhibit, while Billy asked, just as carefully, who performed the operation. It wasn't difficult to get the information, Ryan was proud of his choice, no matter how painful it was for me to hear a child tell me that he neutered a natural part of himself instead of learning to control it.

I was afraid, honestly, as Billy and I prepared to leave of how differently he and I would see Ryan's choice. I knew how Billy felt about supes, I had no wool over my eyes about the man I loved, but Ryan was a child. He wasn't old enough to make this type of choice, and I hoped that Billy could see that, but I feared that, as his guardian he might think it was the right one.

Billy didn't simply let Ryan hug him, he actually participated in the embrace, murmuring to the boy as I stood apart to give them privacy. I was surprised when Ryan wrapped his arms around me right after. My fingers slid through his silky hair and I smiled as he thanked me for coming back to see him, and for bringing Billy with me. I told him we'd be back again the following Sunday, but he didn't release me, holding on just a bit longer, and breathing in deeply it seemed.

"Are you alright?" I whispered, my nose almost in his hair, our heights weren't that far off. He hummed and I sighed at the realization of just how starved for nurturing Ryan really was. Squeezing him a little tighter, I let my eyes meet Billy's as the young boy who bore his last name clung to me.

Leaving the second time was marginally easier than the first only because Billy was with me and made no bones about weaving a threat into our parting with Ms. Davos and her companion. Promising that we'd be back Sunday, that Ryan should be ready to see us, and that we might just be going out - we left. We were leaving the darkening mock community before either of us spoke to one another.

"He had them put them in himself, Ronnie." Billy's voice carried across the minimal road noise that the car made as he drove us home. "Ryan chose to -"

"To neuter himself," I agreed, with less pleasant terms than I felt Billy planned on using. He wouldn't even alter Terror, but Ryan - a ten year old little boy was doing it to himself. "He let someone put chips inside of himself to keep a part of what is a piece of him naturally, Billy, at bay." I heard him sigh. "I know you think this is an answer to a problem, I do, but Ryan isn't like the other supes, he WAS born this way. And instead of learning to control his powers, or harnessing them, he's choosing to -" I couldn't continue, the idea of it hurt too much.

The silence between us grew, but it wasn't tense. Not yet.

We stopped at my parents' to pick up Terror and Mom seemed to pick up on the undercurrent between us. While Billy was talking to Dad and playing with "our boy", she pulled me aside and asked me why I was so pale.

"It was a tough visit," I sighed, thinking about Ryan and how his arms had clung to me. Mom waited, the patience of a parent and the stare of a woman who wasn't going to let me off on the bare minimum. "Ryan made a choice that I don't think he's old enough to have made." She nodded and I went on. "Billy might disagree."

Mom gave me a half smile. "You two haven't REALLY argued as a couple yet, have you?" I shook my head, thinking that my freak out at the hospital probably didn't count. "Just remember that you love one another, Ronnie, and that you're better together." She pulled me into a hug and sighed. "He's a rough one, but a good one, I think."

"Yeah," I met Billy's gaze when Mom released me, he was smiling at me and that dimple of his was peeking out. "Yeah, he is."

Terror was snuggled between us, not as exhausted as he'd be if he had spent the night with my parents, but content that Billy and I were taking him home. We were quiet as Billy drove us, before he could ask, I told him that I had everything at home for dinner so he drove straight without stopping.

When we arrived, our pup was ready to run, but instead of going ahead with him, Billy pulled me to him and kissed me hard and deeply. As I pulled back and looked up, he smiled down at me. "I know we're gonna talk about it, Ronnie," he was so quiet I wasn't sure Terror could hear him. "And I know it's gonna be hard, but I love you and I wanted you to know that."

"Did you eavesdrop on me and Mom?" I tilted my head and stared at him. His eyes were twinkling. "I love you too, Billy Butcher." He leaned down for another kiss, but I stopped him. "If you keep this up, we're gonna starve and Terror's gonna run off and eat a poor rabbit."

I threw dinner together, tempting though it was to make a couple HotPockets each and make do, and was waiting when my boys were back in the house. Billy hung up his coat and met me at the kitchen table. He sat down and picked up his fork.

"Do we talk while we eat?" I asked, picking up my own. "Or do we wait?"

Billy had popped the first bite into his mouth, but he didn't let a little thing like that stop him from answering me. "Let's get it over with."

Shaking my head, I sighed and took my own first bite. He swallowed his first, and so he got to start talking first - damn the luck of that draw.

"Look, Ronnie, I know you think that Ryan ain't old enough to choose," my eyes flashed to his and he nodded to show he knew he hit the nail on the head. "But it's his body, ain't it?" I rolled my eyes, and he went on. "You didn't see what he did to her, not in person, not in that moment -" his crows feet, usually I'd associate them with his laughter, but not now, not while he was thinking of that day, their shared loss. "If it gives him some peace -"

"Peace?" I stared at him, wondering if that's really what he thought. "Ryan wants a home and a family, Billy. He wants to have the nurturing that he lost because he didn't know how to control a natural part of him, a part of him that he had no idea how to control because -" I stopped, looking down at my plate. I wondered if I could ever actually say anything critical about Becca and her parenting to Billy? "Ryan was born with these powers, Billy. He was born with this inside of him, and instead of anyone teaching him how to control them, he was left in the dark."

Billy was waiting to stare at me when I looked up from my plate. He looked patient, but I could see the tension in him, the knife's edge that he seemed balanced on. "After what he did to her -" there it was, the reasoning for why she wouldn't have been willing to even acknowledge Ryan's powers. "How would you have dealt with it?" A challenge, clear and simple.

"That's not fair, but I guess I should have expected it." I pushed my plate away, no longer hungry. "All I know, Billy Butcher, is that ignoring a natural part of a child because of one of the parent's flaws does NOTHING other than scar that child. Not physically, but emotionally and psychologically." I didn't drop my gaze from his. He wanted to bait me, fine, he had my attention. "Ryan is starving for affection. His only other connection, aside from Homelander, is you." I let that little nugget sink into his thick skull. "And he can fucking hear as well as his biological sperm donor so I imagine that at some point he picked up on your not so fucking quiet feelings about supes. So gee, Billy, I wonder why Ryan BUTCHER would allow some asshole to experiment on him with power inhibiting chips?"

And, ignoring my mom's advice, because honestly I felt like Billy had struck a lower blow than I did, I picked up my almost full plate and tossed the food in the disposal then put it in the dishwasher.

"You can find a blanket and extra pillow in the linen closet if you want to sleep on the sofa," I reminded him. "Or one of the many fucking guest rooms are made up for visitors, because your ass is NOT welcome in our bed tonight." And with that final shot, I left the kitchen and went to our bathroom and took a shower to try to wash off the day, then curled into our bed, which was too fucking big without his huge ass body and his bigger than life ego and cried myself to sleep.