I made sure that Ryan was set for his video game playtime (? I'm new to this, is this the right vernacular?) - getting him snacks and drinks, showing him the minifridge that I was actually happy to see that the minions had stocked and reminding him that I would be close by - earning me another tight hug around my middle and allowing a moment extra just to hold him tight right back. And then, turning around to see the sperm source waiting for his own moment with Ryan.

I didn't stay to watch, I'm not nearly voyeuristic enough to want to see him attempting human interaction with his own child - considering I was terrified that I might see a slightly convincing performance.

I didn't have to wait long where I'd chosen for our little chat to take place - my office that hadn't really ever been used - so we were slightly removed from Ryan and the other people that were meandering around my home, but close enough that we could be available should the need arise. I didn't want to chat in my bedroom, I didn't want him to get any weirder ideas than usual.

During my short wait, I had a look around at the unutilized room and realized that my work laptop had been placed on the desk - closed and so had my bag as well as the files that I'd brought home. Turning when I heard the door shut, I decided to take a seat behind the desk - give me something of an advantage, or at least the illusion of one.

Homelander stood, because of course he did, and took a few beats to - I don't actually know what his pregnant pauses were for, egomania wasn't one of my specialties. And I had a few specialties, even if it seemed like fucking ages since I've used any of them.

"You must have questions," this is how he chose to start this little chit chat? Was he fucking kidding me?

I want a goddamn huge fucking cookie basket with a truck full of Ben and Jerry's Half Baked for keeping my cool when honestly I really wanted to scream, claw, and bitch like a demon.

"Questions?" My tone was steady and calm, even if I felt like anything but. "I have a few," gesturing toward one of the guest chairs close by, I then stopped speaking - he was not going to hover, not if this conversation was going to maintain any shred of dignity.

Whatever he saw when he looked at me had his ass touching the chair seat faster than I would have normally expected from him. Once he had that ridiculous cape arranged, I began.

"Why must you always wear that?" OK, that wasn't quite where I wanted to start, but for fuck's sake it was nearly impossible to have a calm and productive fucking talk with someone who looked like - well like he did. And my slip in composure had his eyebrows raised in what I was going to take for both surprise and admiration - I hadn't gone the expected route, after all.

"I'm comfortable in it," it sounded simple, but I didn't buy that this was what he was most comfortable in - it looked more restrictive than a fucking straightjacket which gave me a thrill at the thought of him possibly being as comfortable in the loony bin - and I had a theory about why he THOUGHT he was most comfortable in it, but that was one to test at a later date.

Homelander was seated exactly opposite of how either Joe or Billy would sit, rigid and stoic, and while he had arrogance oozing from his pores as heavily as either of them had, it was different.

We studied one another and I had to guess the reasons why he might be here, why he felt like he had a chance with me, because it didn't make any fucking sense.

"Alright, then how about this one," a slight nod of his head was a sign he was giving me permission to go on, not that I fucking needed it. "What did you mean during dinner?"

"About why I'd rather have something undiluted and -" my eyes narrowed and he stopped, knowing he was treading too close to my end point. "You want to know why I said I'd rather have something that wasn't sterile."

"Someone, I think you mean," and I waited, watching him as he went through the ordeal of picking and choosing his words - I could almost see each one that he was picking through and discarding - which seemed odd given his expression hadn't shifted from mildly interested after I managed to make his eyebrows raise.

His gaze locked on mine and I refused to blink. "When I chose to give you my -"

"When you chemically attacked me with both your bodily fluids and Vought knows what, you mean." Clearly I had multiple limits and him tiptoeing around his former bad acts against me was one of the triggers. "Go on," he had stopped and waited for me to help him clarify his starting point.

"What you don't know, what you couldn't possibly have guessed or found out," and I knew, as a chill ran up my spine and through my veins that whatever he was planning on finally telling me was going to change something drastically - or rather it was going to change me.

I was still in my home office, still seated behind a desk that I had never used before the past few hours, and I was alone.

Once Homelander had finally unburdened himself and just how fucking truly dark his past deeds against me had been, and after I made him give me his word that he wouldn't tell anyone else and that he'd take himself and his Vought affiliated legion with him - for me to take the time to process what he'd told me - after listening to him telling Ryan it was bedtime and that he could see me in the morning, and the quiet sounds of Ryan getting ready to turn in - I finally started to truly unpack the absolute shittiest of presents that an over confident and horribly narcissistic dickwad could possibly have given another human being.

First of all, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that there had never been a safe place once I had been infected with his biological offshoot. Even within the protected walls of an unknown safehouse, surrounded by fully vetted medical professionals, with Billy at my side and Grace watching over everything, I hadn't been free of him and Vought.

And somehow, someway, in some fucked up version of the world, that wasn't even the worst part.

No, it wasn't that I'd been "cured" by a labrat that I felt comfortable enough to keep seeing once I was free and medically cleared, who was also one of many planted professionals that my attacker had inserted into that supposedly safe place. It wasn't even that I nearly died - not due to the what I'd been repeatedly told had been an "anti-V" version of bullshit that shouldn't be allowed to exist in the world with average assholes - by my own need to be rid of any particulate that had any relation whatsoever to the man who set all of this in motion. After every single word that he'd offered me prior to his exit from this room and house, that didn't even fucking make a ripple in the pool of my fears.

The fact that I wasn't actually sterile or infertile wasn't nearly the balm that it should have been - not when I now knew precisely why my genetic code was being shifted and changed. Not when I had to wonder when precisely those changes would become apparent and I wouldn't be able to pretend -

But even that, even if it was terrible and scary, didn't hold a candle to the last thrust of his truth knife.

Knowing that I had actually been pregnant with Billy Butcher's child, that I had a tiny being that I wanted more than I could articulate, but that unlike when I had a say - even if it almost cost me my life - it was ripped away from me. Like a bandaid that removed flesh and bone as it was torn away - leaving not only a scar, but a gaping hole where it once lay. And there wasn't a single thing I could do about to, to correct it, to make it a loss that could be shared and grieved and then eventually grow and build from -

I would be denied that, not only because Billy Butcher was dying, not simply because Billy didn't truly necessarily want to have a family, no even that I could almost heal from -

It was because I knew, just like I had feared while under the care of a Vought populated clinic in the middle of nowhere, that if Billy Butcher knew exactly what every decision Homelander had made and set in motion had created within me, and what the endgame he hoped for meant - he would gladly kill me without a thought or pause.

With a shot and a yearly exam, Homelander had done what every second after had tried to stop - what my unblinking urge to rid myself of what I deemed a parasite had set into motion - was the one thing that truly fucked up the future of Ronnie and Billy and ended whatever goal I'd set for my life.

I wasn't simply a supposedly barren CIA agent with a phD and the urge to – It didn't matter, since I wasn't me anymore or I wouldn't be.

I was changing into the very thing that I was supposed to be an oversight line of defense against and not only that the entire reason that I had to change, according to HIM, was to give me what I so yearned for and what sickeningly he did as well - a family. Ryan, me, Homelander, and other babies - babies that I would be more than capable of carrying and having without intervention if necessary since I'd be a supe as well. A family of supes, biologically connected, a truly nuclear family.

And then the caveat - he swore he wouldn't touch me until I wanted him to - until I asked him to. And as I thought of Joe and Billy I had to wonder, was his plan to make me realize that I couldn't have what I truly wanted - not if I feared what I WOULD be and because of that and the desperation that I'd feel at being alone, something that I knew Ryan felt, that I'd turn to the one being who I could safely be with, that I'd be with the one that knew every dark and dirty secret about what I was and how it had happened.

As I sat in the darkening office, listening to the silence of the house around me, I wondered if he might be right.