Running from Himself 2-16

We not… we not doing this. Reginald Franklin was a patient man.

Maybe not in this life, but definitely in the last. After all, you didn’t become a doctor without the ability to keep your head down, on straight, and focused forward through all the bullshit in your way.

While he kept the powers and body of this life (for the most part), he had brought the mindset and experiences of his last one forward with him. That was what kept him calm. That was what kept him strategic. That was what kept him under control.

The rug in his living room was an expensive gift from one of the many random entertainers A-Train had been cool with in his tenure on the Seven. No cheaper than a low-end car, it was made from some sort of material by hand with enough skill to pull that kind of price tag.

Unfortunately for the rug, Reggie didn’t care about the details of any of that as he wore a track into the damn thing. We not doing this. 

That mindset got him past the stress of harboring America’s Most Wanted.

Past the headache of Edgar and Vought.

Past the ticking clock of his body being on a time limit, apparently.

But this… this was a step fucking too far.

What the fuck is happening in my house right now.

It wasn’t a question. He already had the answers he needed, most of them at least, and everything else he needed to know was shoved to the back as he decided to deal with what was actually most important.

Back and forth, sneakers dragging on imported material, the air was thick with the smell of antiseptic from the first-aid kit MM was messing around with. Mix that with whatever greasy takeout Frenchie had ordered last night still sitting on his counter, and it was another headache for him to deal with.

The speedster’s eyes trailed across his living room again as Hughie slumped over in one of his chairs, the beanpole looking like he’d gone for twelve-rounds of tumble dry inside a cement mixer. Blood crusted on his forehead and fresh gauze on his bare chest, Marvin Milk stood over him like a mother hen; a six foot buffed-up mother hen who could take you apart twice as easy as he could put you together. Butcher was off in the corner, trench coat on and smugness radiating as he stood with his arms crossed at the chaos Reggie was dealing with.

If it was just that, he could deal.

Hell, it wouldn’t be the weirdest shit that had happened in his mansion in the last year.

But no, sitting on his couch, on his furniture, were three people who had absolutely zero business being here.

One Middle Eastern woman, all olive skin and pressed pantsuit like she was auditioning for the lead role in a Netlfix-produced Hilary Clinton biopic. Next to her was a woman who could actually play the part on the big screen — as blonde, white and old as Hilldog herself — in a longcoat the color of Butcher’s usual wardrobe.

And then, because God wasn’t done giving him more shit to deal with, there was fuckin’ Lamplighter. 

Of all people, Lamplighter.

Ashton Connors, the firebug himself; sitting right there in scrubs and looking like he was coasting on fumes and bad decisions.

I need coffee for this. Ten cups, maybe. Reggie frowned as he remembered exactly how little effect caffeine had on him, given his metabolism. Or whiskey. A gallon of whiskey.

“Big M,” Reggie jabbed a thumb over his shoulder at the assembled collection of People Who Shouldn't Be Here.  “Why is there a fucking US Senator and…” The thumb went directly to the old white lady, Reggie’s brain stalling out completely as he tried to find her name. A year ago, he'd have known this. 

Thing was, though, a year ago, this had all been a show he binged between shifts at the hospital.  Now it was his life, and the details were slipping through his fingers like sand as A-Train’s life took up more and more of the unimportant space in his head “…who the fuck are you again?”

MM didn’t even look up from Hughie’s forehead, another piece of fresh white gauze in his hands. “That’s Grace Mallory.”

Reggie just kept staring at him. 

Waiting.

“Former Deputy Director of the CIA,” MM finally finished for him, voice flat. “And our old boss.”

See, that much he knew. “Oh, wowww.”

The sarcasm was laying it on a bit thick, thick enough to tear up a slice of white bread, but Reggie didn’t really have it in him to care right now. “The former fucking Deputy Director of the CIA is in my house. Like I sent an invitation.”

“Gee…”

“Nah, Em Em, see, if I knew I was opening my place up to old white ladies with government clearance and a license to kill, I’d have put out some tea and had bingo ready, maybe some grandma cookies too.” He looked over at Mallory, tight smile on his face he didn’t feel at all. “No offense, of course.”

“Some taken,” Mallory replied, voice dry enough to start a forest fire.

A grunt left his throat before he could stop it, Reggie rolling his eyes. “And the pantsuit? What, we taking in senators now?”

“Congresswoman,” the other woman corrected, her voice bright and firm, the kind of voice that was used to microphones and podiums and cameras and people listening whether they wanted to or not. “Congresswoman Victoria Neuman. And I’m working with them against Vought.”

“…fucking great.” A hand ran down his face, muffling the muttered words even further. “Why not, right? The more the merrier. We gonna invite Stan Edgar over next to make my day fucking worse or what?”

For some reason, the congresswoman cracked a smile at that, bigger and wider than he expected for such a nothing joke. For a second, he almost wanted to ask her what was so funny but another voice, tired and raspy, took his attention first.

“Hey, Reg… long time no see.” 

Reggie turned slow, real slow, because he already knew who it was gonna be before he looked. Lamplighter was just sitting there, shoulders hunched in like he was trying to disappear into the cushions. Pathetic didn't even cover it. The man looked like an apology that got left out in the rain.

His eyes narrowed. "I'll talk to you later."

Lamplighter shrugged, gesture so defeated it was almost impressive. "Fair enough."

Reggie turned back around, eyes on the still-quiet Hughie and the busy medic that was Big M, the ones who were supposed to be on his side. Like, maybe tell me before you’re gonna turn my place into a halfway house for feds and washed-up heroes. The irony in the fact that it kinda already was that and had been for the last year didn’t exactly miss him, but Reggie wasn’t here to confront his hypocrisy.

After all, it was his place.

He could be as hypocritical as he wanted. "So y’all were just gonna bring the entire federal government and a retired firebug into my living room without so much as a 'hey, you cool with this' first?" Asking forgiveness instead of permission was a principle he understood well, but it didn’t mean he had to like it when he was on the other side.

"Time-sensitive situation, Mr Blue," MM said, voice that low steady rumble he used when he was being patient with someone who was about to stop being patient. "Shit went bad at Sage Grove yesterday and had to move."

"Sage Grove?" Reggie threw out his hands, slapping the chest of his tracksuit as he was faced with another question he didn’t have an answer to. "What the hell is a Sage Grove? And don't call me that shit, man, I'm not even wearing the suit."

“A Vought black site, mon ami,” Reggie turned to see Serge poke his head up from the basement, the mysterious frenchman holding a bunch of empty bowls in his hand. “A hospital for ze… for ze supes who are not right in ze head. Very bad place.”

“And you went without me?” The question came out sharper than he intended, a flicker of something that felt dangerously close to being hurt. “After all the shit we’ve been through? First was the fucking Kenji shit and now it’s this? You guys go on all these secret side missions and don’t even bother to tell me?”

Hughie flinched, looking up from under MM’s gentle doctoring. “Reggie, we… we didn’t want to bother you. You were on the movie set, doing the… the Vought thing. We figured you were busy.”

“Busy?” The short, sharp laugh that left Reggie’s lips had almost no humor to it. “I was pretending to get blown up and talking to Little Lord Fish Fucker about his feelings. I had time. You just didn’t ask.”

Neuman chose then to rise from the couch, her posture all business. “Hate to interrupt, as fascinating as this little found family drama is, but we have a more pressing issue relating to Sage Grove Center. Lamplighter here was the chief orderly. He’s agreed to testify about what was happening there.”

“And what exactly was happening there?” Reggie asked, crossing his arms.

“Vought was experimenting,” Mallory answered with a sniff that seemed disgusted at the idea, more than anything. “Trying to stabilize Compound V in non-infant subjects, from what I’ve been told. The results were… unpredictable.”

“Unpredictable how?” he pressed, suddenly needing to know this, more than anything else right now. Can they actually… actually stabilize the shit? He wasn’t sure if stabilizing V would do anything for his potential health issues, but he wasn’t going to turn down any leads.

“Well, I mean…” said lead orderly clicked his tongue, suddenly looking a bit less calm than before, “dosing babies with V is already a risk even with all the DNA testing Vought does, you know… pre-checks right to see what class of V they can take, if they can take any?” Lamplighter rubbed his face. “Shit’s basically the liquid version of a nuke.. I mean, not literally… well, you know what I mean, Reg?”

The old blonde raised an eyebrow high even as Neuman snapped her attention onto the firestarter. “Classes? V comes in classes? This is the first I’m hearing of this.”

Ashton rubbed the dense stubble on his face, the tired-looking supe letting out a sigh. “...well, yeah, the shit does come in fucking classes. Vought’s had the shit since before you were even born. You think they’ve been milking the same variant since Soldier Boy?” The man in the orderly uniform clicked his tongue again. “Nah, there’s a whole bunch of them.”

“Well,” Mallory’s eyes narrowed on the firestarter, “what are they, then? Don’t leave us waiting.”

Reggie let out a grunt of his own, deciding to throw his two cents into the pile. “Look, I know there’s Class 1 through 5 V. Also a Class 0 but that one’s… that…”

Lamplighter snorted, the sound short as he got serious real quick. “That shits basically water, man, barely lasts an hour. Doesn’t do much more than toughen you up and give you a little high on top of it.” His eyes went to Neuman and Mallory, shaking his head. “Vought uses it to give supes someone to train with they won’t easily tear in half. Occasionally, some of the rougher supes use it to dose some call girls so they also won’t… well…”

The old lady rolled her eyes. “Tear in half, got it.”

“Jesus,” Hughie sat up again, the beanpole voicing his shock at that mental image.

Mothers Milk clicked his tongue, clearly unsurprised by supe bullshit and Vought antics. “Jesus is right”

“Everything from Class One to Class Four is a tossup, you know?” Ashton continued with a shrug, the pyrokinetic tapping out a stuttering rhythm on his thigh. “V is still V, no matter how much you water it down. Even the Zero shit can go bad, even if that’s only like a one in four chance or whatever. Class Five… well, most don’t really have to worry. That’s just not given out unless in one and ones like… well, like us, mostly…” 

The orderly tilted his head at the only other former Seven member in the room. “Class Five, they call it Neon…”

Neon, Cobalt, Sky, Aqua, Baby, Tap. The six classes of Blue, from Five to Zero. He might not remember much, but a year of running V for Homelander and putting the shit into his system left a good bit of knowledge behind. That doesn’t go away.

“Neon… Neon makes the B-listers, usually,” Ashton continued, the man pulling a face for a split second. “Polarity, the Deep, Black Noir, Ironcast, all those… and sometimes it works too well, and makes the freaks like me and Reg here. The big guns.”

Yeah… Reggie clenched his fists. Big guns.

“Big guns, huh?” Mother’s Milk sounded off, Reggie turning to face the big man. “You ain’t seem all that strong to me… for a supe, at least.”

Lamplighter smirked his way, the man shaking his head. “Yeah, I bet. How many supes you know can vaporize four inches of steel in a split second? You know how much energy that even is? Can you do the math, big guy?”

“You’re like…” Hughie spoke up, a look of familiar shock on his face. “That’s like… thermobaric.

Lamplighter’s smirk warmed a little, less mocking and more real as he clicked his tongue. “Yeah, like I said, big guns. Hell, less than like four hundred newborns a year could even handle the shit. Been some deaths in hospitals, too, but nothing too messy. Easy to cover up.”

“Cause they’re fucking babies?” For a man who looked beat to shit, Hughie could find some bass in his voice.

“Yeah,” Lamplighter answered without flinching. “Adults… it’s a lot harder. Sometimes they just explode, like a mess everywhere. Other times…they blow up, burn up, just straight melt into a puddle of blood and skin.” 

Reggie’s fists clenched tighter at his sides, eyes shut. Blow up, burn up, straight melt… 

“Vought didn’t really care, though,” He couldn’t close his ears, though, Lamplighter’s voice still coming in strong. “They were trying to finalize the stuff. Make it work on adults more often than not. Make the formula… all of them… make them all better.”

“So Vought has a secret hospital full of unstable, traumatized supes that they’ve been torturing for years,” Reggie summarized, the pieces clicking together with a sickening thud. “And you guys went there, poked the bear, and now you’re back here. What was the endgame supposed to be exactly?”

“We needed a witness,” Neuman said, her gaze sharp.

Reggie frowned back. “Were you going there to get a witness?”

Marvin frowned at the question, finally and properly looking up his way as Hughie forced himself into a sitting position. “Well… not exactly, Gee…”

“So, once again,” Reggie scoffed, the speedster throwing his hands up again, “y’all fucked up your mission plan, didn’t even accomplish what you needed to in the first place, and needed a fuckin’ supe to get you even close to the endzone? Am I right or am I right?”

He could tell that hit a nerve, just from the way Butcher flinched more than anything. Mother’s Milk may have hung his head a bit but Butcher looked ready to open fire right the fuck now, if he even had a gun on him.

“Look, everything else aside,” Netflix Hillary started again, “Lamplighter is a good start, but he’s compromised. His testimony as a member of the Seven in Sage Grove will be enough to take a real shot at the king. We’d ask you, but… traumatic brain injury on public record and your lack of concrete recollection makes that a poor choice.”

“Okay, you’ve got your canary,” Reggie scoffed. “What now?”

“Now, we keep Lamplighter where Vought can’t reach him,” Mallory answered, her eyes locking onto his. “I’d put him up in a CIA safehouse, but with Vought working with the Department of Defense and the current administration, we’d be risking too much. No, it’s for the best he stay here.”

"My house?" His voice went up, way up, frustration that had been sitting in his chest all morning finally breaking loose as the pacing started up again, feet hitting that expensive imported rug harder than before. The frantic energy was there, that buzzing under his skin and in his heart like he was about to hit a residential street at five hundred full-tilt. "I let y'all crash at my house 'cause I wanted to do good, be helpful and shit, and you're using it like a goddamn AirBNB for your spy game bullshit? What the hell, man?"

"Bro, Gee, man, you gotta calm down," 

“Nah, see, Em Em, I’m not gonna calm down!” Words came out a hiss, jaw clenched tight enough his jaw was half-way to hurting. “This is my life we’re talkin’ bout here! I’m the one whose face is on the goddamn news every other week! I'm the one who had to go sit in an office with Stan Edgar and let him hold my entire life in his hands like I was some puppe-” His hisses dissolved into an annoyed grunt, Reggie’s fists still clenched so tight his nails felt a second away from drawing blood.  “I might be fucking dying right now and you guys are over here playing fuckup James Bond and not even telling me what the plan is!”

Hughie blinked up from the chair, gauze half-covering one eye. "You're what?"

"The plan," Butcher cut right over him, not even bothering to acknowledge what the beanpole just asked, "is to do what needs doin'. Somethin' you might not understand, what with your movie deals and the lot."

Oh, hell no. 

“Fuck yooouuu, you tea drinking terrorist fuck,” Reggie whirled right on him, one shaky finger pointing his way as the supe tried to do his best to force down his feelings. “You think this is a game to me? You think I like having to play nice with those corporate fucking dickheads? I do it to protect you, all of you fuckups! To protect fucking Annie, who has to stay right under Homelanders psycho ass! To keep the whole goddamn roof from caving in on us! And you think this is some easy shit? Like I’m playing around? You’re off doing God knows what, and I’m the one here, holding shit together!”

"Wait, what do you mean dying?" Hughie again, voice going higher.

"Yeah, Gee," MM straightened up, first-aid supplies forgotten. "What you... what you mean by that?"

Should've kept my mouth shut. It was a little too late to worry about that, though.

"Holdin' it together?" Butcher let out this laugh, cruel and sharp and aimed right at him. "Looks to me like you're just the rich cunt payin' the bills. Don't get confused and think that makes you the one in charge, yeah?"

The living room got real small, real fast. Muscles in his legs were already coiling, ready to blur across the space and see how fast Butcher could talk with a fist going right through the space where his head used to be, when a voice cut through everything.

"Enough." Mallory, standing up now, voice sharp enough to slice through steel. "All of you. This is not productive."

Not pro- Reggie spun on her, ready to tell this old white lady exactly where she could shove her productivity in his house, but she was already turning to Neuman before he could get a single word out.

"We'll get you what you need, Congresswoman," Mallory said, all business, tactical and cold. "Give us forty-eight hours."

Neuman nodded back.. "You'll have it." Then she looked Reggie’s way, something flickering his way that might have been sympathy. "And for what it's worth, Mr. Franklin... thank you for your hospitality."

A grunt was all he had left in him. Turning his back on all of them felt good, felt right, even as Hughie's voice and MM's started calling after him with questions he didn't want to answer. Fuck off.

He needed a drink. Or a nap.

Both.