[ Sent shortly before he and Alicent take to the network: ]
assuming you're not running at the same speed you usually are, go to the library. there's some shit there from my neck of the woods, called temp v. it'll put some pep back into your step. can't guarantee it'll make you fast again, but it'll make you something.
don't take more than one at a time, and wait until it wears off to inject it again. and don't take more than three or four shots total if you can help it.
( he is, in fact, not running at his usual speed and, ironically, the world suddenly feels too fast. )
whoaaa hold on hold on like some kind of super serum? is this shit even tested?
( he does not trust any kind of temporary superpower quick fix, not after what lex luthor's shield patches did to conner. seems like this temp v probably isn't any different (or it's worse) if homelander is warning him about a dosage limit. )
basically super serum, yeah. it's been tested, which is how i know it works, but it's not stable.
vought's been trying to make it military-grade — make a soldier a superhero for 24 hours at a time. easy to use, easy to control. the real stuff's just called compound v, but that'll make a 24/7 hero, which is bad for business if they're not controlling it.
( he loves the thought of his friends overdosing and dying! )
yeah i'll be there it also physically pains me to say this but gimme a few minutes
( even if he jogs, the library's practically on the other side of the damn house (and now he has to avoid all these fucking zombies the slow way). but he makes it to homelander's room eventually and politely knocks before he enters. it always weirds him out how empty it is, but today he offers: )
Dude, seriously. After all this zombie shit is over, we have got to get some feng shui going on in here. ( but he spots the team green ornament still hanging somewhere, which is delightfully distracting for all of two seconds before: ) Anyway, supes. Maybe we should both explain?
( because it seems like they're fundamentally different, from what he's gathered. )
[ Feng shui gets a slight grimace but not an outright refusal, if only because he's aware that his room is a bit of a work in progress. That, and it's easier to entertain that thought than trying to explain exactly what the fuck is going on — what he is, what Compound V does, how supes came about in the first place.
But at the very least, there's the chair that came with the writing desk, which he offers to Wally before settling on the edge of the bed. ]
Yeah, the— [ a wave of a hand, a sigh ] —supe thing.
[ It's as he's about to launch into an explanation he hasn't thought through that he decides to change course — one more stall, though it's just as much a marker of how significant Homelander finds this, too. ]
Look, don't repeat any of this to anyone else, okay? Promise me.
( wally flips the chair around to sit on it backwards, leaning forward against folded arms. and when homelander makes him promise, he immediately lifts a hand in a three-finger salute. )
On my honor, my lips are sealed. Cross my heart, hope to die, yadda yadda. ( who the hell would he tell, anyway? koby is a good friend, but he's way too nosy for this sort of thing. and, frankly, wally can't think of anyone else who would care. ) If I can keep Batman's secret, I can keep yours.
( which is truly a feat considering wally also has the biggest mouth known to man. )
[ As soon as Wally agrees, Homelander seems to realize that there's nothing left standing between him and the distinctly unappealing prospect of telling the truth. It's not that he's a born liar — far from it, he's never had much of a poker face — but he's— it makes him something different, he thinks, to have to confess to this. Something less. And he can't stand that.
Immediately, the bridge of his nose wrinkles, his lips curling back over his teeth as he lets out an unhappy hiss. ]
So it's— [ start again ] —shit. Okay. Basically, yes. Vought owns supes because they're the only ones, theoretically, who can make them. But it's not like they can have that getting out, right? So they say we're born with it, since Compound V's permanent, not this temporary shit. No re-ups, no problem. Not even most of the supes know. None of 'em knew, until pretty recently.
But I'm not—
[ And here's the catch, the thing that makes it tough for him. He reacts as though it's something to shy away from physically, shaking his head before switching, hardly subtle, to a completely different tack. ]
( that's ... well. pretty fucking bleak, actually. it sounds like if lexcorp won and made an army of corporate genomorph superclones. he tries not to look too horrified, but it certainly puts homelander's world in a much different context. sure, there are artificial ways to make a superhero back home — blockbuster formula, kobra-venom — but the "organic" ones have it written in their dna from birth.
his brow furrows at homelander's obvious deflection, but he lets it go for now. not what? like the others? he'll have to circle back to that.
pinching at the bridge of his nose, he takes a breath, as if to signal this might get a little long winded. he might have lost his speed, but he's still a certified motormouth. )
Okay, yeah, so metahumans are — ( he gestures at himself, and will continue to keep talking with his hands because without his speed he's just adhd and can't sit still. ) Well, I'm one. You remember I told you how I blew myself up for superspeed? The only reason I didn't die or become a vegetable with permanent brain damage is because of my metagene. That's — it's basically the genetic marker for most superpowered heroes, unless they're an alien, Amazonian, Atlantean, or a Magi. ( do not ask him about magi, he doesn't want to talk about it! ) Advanced tech guys and superserum types don't count, either.
Scientifically speaking, it means we're — I mean, we're still human, but — like, there's humans aka homo sapiens, and then there's metahumans aka homo meta. We're considered a subspecies of homo sapiens because the metagene basically rewrites our DNA once it's activated, which makes us genetically distinct enough from the rest of the population. But that only happens after experiencing, like, seriously major trauma. Like my experiment or —
( he runs a hand through his hair, drags it over his face. there's a melancholy that settles behind his eyes, something nostalgic and a little rueful at the same time. if he had a chance to go back? he never would have quit the team, never would have hung up the mantle. how many more kids could they have saved if they'd had wally's expertise? his speed?
and not just that — dick needed him and he left, because what? he couldn't handle the pressure? couldn't stand to see another teammate die? (as if dick wasn't trying to kill himself with work before the grief of losing a brother buried him alive.) because somehow college was more important than the team? (dick offered to cover a full ride to MIT to try to convince wally to stay on the east coast, to not move to the other side of the fucking country. but maybe wally was trying to kill himself, too, just in a different way: frontloading his life with academics in an unfamiliar place with zero friends; letting denial consume him, convince him that his relationship with his highschool sweetheart wasn't slowly and painfully falling apart.)
in hindsight, he realizes how selfish that was. he'd gone to stanford because he was running away, because he was scared that if he stayed, he'd have to watch dick die, too, one day. funny, how much worse it felt knowing that dick did almost die, that he might not have ever seen his best friend again because he was off playing student in california while dick was getting a whole mountain blown up in rhode island. he knows that dick doesn't blame him; they're in a good place now, or would be if wally were still in eudio, but digging it all back up now … he should have been there. )
I told you about the Reach, right? Aliens who wanted to take over Earth and enslave mankind? Well, before they threw a hissy fit and tried to destroy the planet because we outed their evil plan, they'd been conducting — ( here, he grimaces, because he clearly doesn't agree with the word: ) — "experiments" on runaways and other kids on the street who they figured wouldn't be missed, trying to isolate the metagene by forcefully activating it — and I'm talking torture-level shit here — all so they could, I don't know, make meta-weapons or something?
The point is, being a metahuman doesn't necessarily mean you'll ever have powers. Someone's metagene could be dormant their whole life until some crazy shit happens at the nursing home and boom: geriatric metahuman. ( then, with a long suffering sigh and a roll of his eyes: ) But, if you're a direct descendant of an active meta, like my uncle's grandson, who got it from his dad who was — will be? — a speedster, then it's, like, pre-activated, I guess. ( and in case that made nosense, he clarifies with a shrug: ) Time travel. My aunt only just found out, like, four months before I bit it.
[ It's ... a lot. Not just in terms of how many words Wally fires off at once — Homelander already knows the kid's a motormouth — but what he's saying, the strange points at which the details overlap with what he's familiar with. Homelander's expression visibly twists as he listens, the idea of trying to maintain a poker face going out the window as soon as he starts to feel the chill of uncertainty begin creeping up his spine.
He doesn't know where to start. With the whole genetic marker thing, which isn't not what Vought had been looking for; the idea of experimenting on runaways, like the girl who'd ended up being his mom, someone Vought had known no one would come looking for; the hours, days, months, years of torture he'd endured while being shaped into something deemed suitable for the public stage. It all feels like the worst fucking migraine he's ever had, way too much for him to process at once. For a second, he squeezes his eyes shut, like that might help him cut through all the noise. When his eyes open, it's as he lets out a breath, his head falling so his gaze finds the floor.
He trusts Wally. That, he knows for sure. ]
Almost all of the supes in my world, [ he begins, slow and careful, ] get Compound V when they're still kids. Babies, really. So long as they're healthy, so long as their genes look good. Me, my son, we're the only ones who were born this way, but even then, I—
—they found some girl, someone with nowhere to go, to carry me, pumped me full of V while I was still in her belly. [ And, yes, he's leaving out the bit about Soldier Boy, because fuck him. ] I was born at Vought. I grew up at Vought. Well, in a fucking Vought lab, so they could test what I could do, what I could endure, make sure I was their good little soldier before they trotted me out to the world and said they found me, made me say I had a normal fucking family and normal fucking childhood before I joined up.
[ His jaw clenches as he wonders why he's saying any of this at all. Wally hadn't asked, not explicitly. And then there's the matter of why it makes him sad. He's alright with it making him angry — he's been angry before. But, thinking about his mother, thinking about everything from a more detached vantage point—
His face flushes. He's already told Alicent this, and he'd felt strange, then, too. ]
I was perfect.
[ And why does he say was? Is it because he's a fucking broken toy, now? Unable to protect himself or anyone else, able to be stripped of his powers without even getting to put up a fight. Because he can't say he's ever had anything else. No aunt, no mom, no dad — not even any friends, not really, not until this place had made him less. ]
( it's eerily familiar, the way homelander describes it. only cadmus hadn't needed a sacrificial lamb in the shape of a woman to carry a pregnancy to term. they just grew conner in a pod. still, there's something dark that crosses wally's face, his jaw setting with a little more tension than homelander is used to seeing on him — an intense, righteous sort of fury simmering just below the surface. when he speaks again, there's hardly any trace of his usual lighthearted, flippant tone. for once, he sounds deadly serious. )
My first real mission, before there was even a Team — we busted into this place called Cadmus. Genetics research lab. Defense contractor, if you dig deep enough. Started out routine, backup for firemen and first responders already on the scene, but pretty quick we discovered there was a lot more going on than just a fire. Secret levels, underground facilities, a fully undisclosed genetic engineering project — and all of that was just a smokescreen for the real purpose of Cadmus. The sole mission of its existence: to clone Superman.
( to make a carbon copy of the world's most powerful hero — who might one day be the world's most powerful enemy, if you believe in the evil superman conspiracy theories. and maybe he would be, if he'd grown up in a lab instead of on a farm in rural kansas with two loving parents and real friends. )
The only problem? Sequencing Kryptonian DNA. So they spliced it with human to fill in the blanks. Grew a whole person in less than sixteen weeks. Ran who knows how many tests to make sure he'd behave, to make sure they could control him. He didn't even have a name until we found him. They treated him like a — like a thing, a specimen. An "it."
He spent his whole existence up to then in a pod, constantly being monitored and tested. Punished for acting out and not being a good little lab rat. ( wally himself had experienced that firsthand, when they all wound up in pods as clone-meat until supey decided better to be free than a prisoner. wally promised to show him the moon, and he had, the second they got out. what came after, though ... he shakes his head, sniffing derisively. ) You know, after we rescued him, he came home with me for a few days until Batman figured out a more appropriate and permanent living situation — and I found him in my closet one morning, sleeping standing up. Said it reminded him of the pod.
( he pauses for a moment, chewing on the inside of his lip, his expression softening into something closer to genuine empathy: )
I know it's not exactly the same, but I'm still sorry there wasn't anyone who cared enough about you to get you out of there. No kid should grow up in a cage, or a pod, or whatever. You're not just some experiment, okay? And you're not just what they forced you to become, either. Superboy was supposed to be perfect too. A perfect weapon, capable of taking down Superman if he ever went rogue. We showed him how to have a real life, the one thing Cadmus never wanted him to have.
( an emphatic nod, then, matter-of-factly: )
The one thing Vought never wanted you to have. But they don't own you just because they "made" you, Homelander. That's just what they want you to think.
✉️ text — un: homelander.
assuming you're not running at the same speed you usually are, go to the library. there's some shit there from my neck of the woods, called temp v.
it'll put some pep back into your step. can't guarantee it'll make you fast again, but it'll make you something.
don't take more than one at a time, and wait until it wears off to inject it again.
and don't take more than three or four shots total if you can help it.
no subject
whoaaa hold on hold on like
some kind of super serum?
is this shit even tested?
( he does not trust any kind of temporary superpower quick fix, not after what lex luthor's shield patches did to conner. seems like this temp v probably isn't any different (or it's worse) if homelander is warning him about a dosage limit. )
no subject
it's been tested, which is how i know it works, but it's not stable.
vought's been trying to make it military-grade — make a soldier a superhero for 24 hours at a time. easy to use, easy to control.
the real stuff's just called compound v, but that'll make a 24/7 hero, which is bad for business if they're not controlling it.
no subject
wait
are all supes hopped up on this v stuff?
theyre not just metahumans?
no subject
[ As for the next part— ]
might be easier if i explain it in person.
meet me at my room?
no subject
thats fantastic
just super
( he loves the thought of his friends overdosing and dying! )
yeah i'll be there
it also physically pains me to say this but
gimme a few minutes
( even if he jogs, the library's practically on the other side of the damn house (and now he has to avoid all these fucking zombies the slow way). but he makes it to homelander's room eventually and politely knocks before he enters. it always weirds him out how empty it is, but today he offers: )
Dude, seriously. After all this zombie shit is over, we have got to get some feng shui going on in here. ( but he spots the team green ornament still hanging somewhere, which is delightfully distracting for all of two seconds before: ) Anyway, supes. Maybe we should both explain?
( because it seems like they're fundamentally different, from what he's gathered. )
no subject
But at the very least, there's the chair that came with the writing desk, which he offers to Wally before settling on the edge of the bed. ]
Yeah, the— [ a wave of a hand, a sigh ] —supe thing.
[ It's as he's about to launch into an explanation he hasn't thought through that he decides to change course — one more stall, though it's just as much a marker of how significant Homelander finds this, too. ]
Look, don't repeat any of this to anyone else, okay? Promise me.
no subject
On my honor, my lips are sealed. Cross my heart, hope to die, yadda yadda. ( who the hell would he tell, anyway? koby is a good friend, but he's way too nosy for this sort of thing. and, frankly, wally can't think of anyone else who would care. ) If I can keep Batman's secret, I can keep yours.
( which is truly a feat considering wally also has the biggest mouth known to man. )
no subject
Immediately, the bridge of his nose wrinkles, his lips curling back over his teeth as he lets out an unhappy hiss. ]
So it's— [ start again ] —shit. Okay. Basically, yes. Vought owns supes because they're the only ones, theoretically, who can make them. But it's not like they can have that getting out, right? So they say we're born with it, since Compound V's permanent, not this temporary shit. No re-ups, no problem. Not even most of the supes know. None of 'em knew, until pretty recently.
But I'm not—
[ And here's the catch, the thing that makes it tough for him. He reacts as though it's something to shy away from physically, shaking his head before switching, hardly subtle, to a completely different tack. ]
—What the fuck are metahumans?
no subject
his brow furrows at homelander's obvious deflection, but he lets it go for now. not what? like the others? he'll have to circle back to that.
pinching at the bridge of his nose, he takes a breath, as if to signal this might get a little long winded. he might have lost his speed, but he's still a certified motormouth. )
Okay, yeah, so metahumans are — ( he gestures at himself, and will continue to keep talking with his hands because without his speed he's just adhd and can't sit still. ) Well, I'm one. You remember I told you how I blew myself up for superspeed? The only reason I didn't die or become a vegetable with permanent brain damage is because of my metagene. That's — it's basically the genetic marker for most superpowered heroes, unless they're an alien, Amazonian, Atlantean, or a Magi. ( do not ask him about magi, he doesn't want to talk about it! ) Advanced tech guys and superserum types don't count, either.
Scientifically speaking, it means we're — I mean, we're still human, but — like, there's humans aka homo sapiens, and then there's metahumans aka homo meta. We're considered a subspecies of homo sapiens because the metagene basically rewrites our DNA once it's activated, which makes us genetically distinct enough from the rest of the population. But that only happens after experiencing, like, seriously major trauma. Like my experiment or —
( he runs a hand through his hair, drags it over his face. there's a melancholy that settles behind his eyes, something nostalgic and a little rueful at the same time. if he had a chance to go back? he never would have quit the team, never would have hung up the mantle. how many more kids could they have saved if they'd had wally's expertise? his speed?
and not just that — dick needed him and he left, because what? he couldn't handle the pressure? couldn't stand to see another teammate die? (as if dick wasn't trying to kill himself with work before the grief of losing a brother buried him alive.) because somehow college was more important than the team? (dick offered to cover a full ride to MIT to try to convince wally to stay on the east coast, to not move to the other side of the fucking country. but maybe wally was trying to kill himself, too, just in a different way: frontloading his life with academics in an unfamiliar place with zero friends; letting denial consume him, convince him that his relationship with his highschool sweetheart wasn't slowly and painfully falling apart.)
in hindsight, he realizes how selfish that was. he'd gone to stanford because he was running away, because he was scared that if he stayed, he'd have to watch dick die, too, one day. funny, how much worse it felt knowing that dick did almost die, that he might not have ever seen his best friend again because he was off playing student in california while dick was getting a whole mountain blown up in rhode island. he knows that dick doesn't blame him; they're in a good place now, or would be if wally were still in eudio, but digging it all back up now … he should have been there. )
I told you about the Reach, right? Aliens who wanted to take over Earth and enslave mankind? Well, before they threw a hissy fit and tried to destroy the planet because we outed their evil plan, they'd been conducting — ( here, he grimaces, because he clearly doesn't agree with the word: ) — "experiments" on runaways and other kids on the street who they figured wouldn't be missed, trying to isolate the metagene by forcefully activating it — and I'm talking torture-level shit here — all so they could, I don't know, make meta-weapons or something?
The point is, being a metahuman doesn't necessarily mean you'll ever have powers. Someone's metagene could be dormant their whole life until some crazy shit happens at the nursing home and boom: geriatric metahuman. ( then, with a long suffering sigh and a roll of his eyes: ) But, if you're a direct descendant of an active meta, like my uncle's grandson, who got it from his dad who was — will be? — a speedster, then it's, like, pre-activated, I guess. ( and in case that made nosense, he clarifies with a shrug: ) Time travel. My aunt only just found out, like, four months before I bit it.
no subject
He doesn't know where to start. With the whole genetic marker thing, which isn't not what Vought had been looking for; the idea of experimenting on runaways, like the girl who'd ended up being his mom, someone Vought had known no one would come looking for; the hours, days, months, years of torture he'd endured while being shaped into something deemed suitable for the public stage. It all feels like the worst fucking migraine he's ever had, way too much for him to process at once. For a second, he squeezes his eyes shut, like that might help him cut through all the noise. When his eyes open, it's as he lets out a breath, his head falling so his gaze finds the floor.
He trusts Wally. That, he knows for sure. ]
Almost all of the supes in my world, [ he begins, slow and careful, ] get Compound V when they're still kids. Babies, really. So long as they're healthy, so long as their genes look good. Me, my son, we're the only ones who were born this way, but even then, I—
—they found some girl, someone with nowhere to go, to carry me, pumped me full of V while I was still in her belly. [ And, yes, he's leaving out the bit about Soldier Boy, because fuck him. ] I was born at Vought. I grew up at Vought. Well, in a fucking Vought lab, so they could test what I could do, what I could endure, make sure I was their good little soldier before they trotted me out to the world and said they found me, made me say I had a normal fucking family and normal fucking childhood before I joined up.
[ His jaw clenches as he wonders why he's saying any of this at all. Wally hadn't asked, not explicitly. And then there's the matter of why it makes him sad. He's alright with it making him angry — he's been angry before. But, thinking about his mother, thinking about everything from a more detached vantage point—
His face flushes. He's already told Alicent this, and he'd felt strange, then, too. ]
I was perfect.
[ And why does he say was? Is it because he's a fucking broken toy, now? Unable to protect himself or anyone else, able to be stripped of his powers without even getting to put up a fight. Because he can't say he's ever had anything else. No aunt, no mom, no dad — not even any friends, not really, not until this place had made him less. ]
no subject
My first real mission, before there was even a Team — we busted into this place called Cadmus. Genetics research lab. Defense contractor, if you dig deep enough. Started out routine, backup for firemen and first responders already on the scene, but pretty quick we discovered there was a lot more going on than just a fire. Secret levels, underground facilities, a fully undisclosed genetic engineering project — and all of that was just a smokescreen for the real purpose of Cadmus. The sole mission of its existence: to clone Superman.
( to make a carbon copy of the world's most powerful hero — who might one day be the world's most powerful enemy, if you believe in the evil superman conspiracy theories. and maybe he would be, if he'd grown up in a lab instead of on a farm in rural kansas with two loving parents and real friends. )
The only problem? Sequencing Kryptonian DNA. So they spliced it with human to fill in the blanks. Grew a whole person in less than sixteen weeks. Ran who knows how many tests to make sure he'd behave, to make sure they could control him. He didn't even have a name until we found him. They treated him like a — like a thing, a specimen. An "it."
He spent his whole existence up to then in a pod, constantly being monitored and tested. Punished for acting out and not being a good little lab rat. ( wally himself had experienced that firsthand, when they all wound up in pods as clone-meat until supey decided better to be free than a prisoner. wally promised to show him the moon, and he had, the second they got out. what came after, though ... he shakes his head, sniffing derisively. ) You know, after we rescued him, he came home with me for a few days until Batman figured out a more appropriate and permanent living situation — and I found him in my closet one morning, sleeping standing up. Said it reminded him of the pod.
( he pauses for a moment, chewing on the inside of his lip, his expression softening into something closer to genuine empathy: )
I know it's not exactly the same, but I'm still sorry there wasn't anyone who cared enough about you to get you out of there. No kid should grow up in a cage, or a pod, or whatever. You're not just some experiment, okay? And you're not just what they forced you to become, either. Superboy was supposed to be perfect too. A perfect weapon, capable of taking down Superman if he ever went rogue. We showed him how to have a real life, the one thing Cadmus never wanted him to have.
( an emphatic nod, then, matter-of-factly: )
The one thing Vought never wanted you to have. But they don't own you just because they "made" you, Homelander. That's just what they want you to think.