Getting his brain put through the invisible grinder had brought Mason down from the emotional high he’d been running on since his week-long “vacation” with Lexi.
This was evident in how he reciprocated her hug when he finally got back to the cabin in the woods. So evident in fact, Lexi picked up the awkwardness immediately. It was as if a gulf had suddenly sprung up between them.
She feared the worst when he pulled away from the hug a short time after it started. He was going to leave her wasn’t he? Funnily enough, it didn’t seem like the end of the world when she thought about it.
Sure, it stung, but it turned out her attempt on the roof of the building was just a moment of weakness. Now that she’d gotten some loving and affection, she didn’t feel so horrible anymore.
But then again, if Mason left, wouldn’t she lose the source of said love and affection?
“How are you doing? ” He asked and palmed her cheek. “Sorry I scared you.” The contact warmed her up as his voice reverberated through her bones.
Lexi was stunned. At his words, obviously, but mostly at herself. Was she really that selfish? Mason had nearly died, and here she was thinking about herself and her needs.
Her goal this entire time was to get someone to spend the rest of her life with. She had at most… 10 to 15 years left and she wanted to spend it all on a high note.However, if her childish fantasies came through, didn’t that mean she had to reciprocate that love and attention? It would be a relationship after all, and those required a balance. 100 percent effort from both sides.
She wanted to say “better start now“ but she held off on that. Mason clearly wanted to get something off his chest. She still needed to answer him though.
“I’m fine.” She breathed out and leaned into his hand. “It’s you I’m worried about.” She laughed, an awkward and uncertain thing that showed she didn’t know how to go about broaching the topic.
And her job was talking to people.
“What happened? You know, with the...”
Mason motioned with his head and they went deeper inside the cabin. He sat down and pulled her to join him, taking quite a while to formulate a response.
“We think it was a Vought assassin. To keep me from talking, obviously.”
Obviously. That’s the word that kept bugging her. Anyone with a brain with no leaks could easily see Vought’s handprints over this, yet somehow no charges had been brought against the corporation.
This thought in particular stood out. The inquisitive, podcast leaning side of her brain was trying to butt in into the moment. She didn’t let it.
She placed a hand over his own and leaned forward, ignoring how small the appendage was compared to his own.“I’m… I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry.”
He shook his head. “Don’t be. The situation is completely, I don’t what to say fucked up, but yeah.”
“Yeah. It really is. Killing all those people. I’m glad you’re okay. You are okay, right?” She said, trying very hard to not look pointedly at his head.
He noticed and chuckled, placing his hand over hers and tapping. “I am. The doctors gave me the all clear.”
She nodded for a bit, thinking about what to ask next.
“Did it… hurt?”
“Nope.”
There were more things she wanted to know, but asking them would be insensitive. So she ended that line of questioning and asked if he wanted to talk about anything else.
“Yeah. I do.”
She braced herself. Last week had been some of the best days of her life. It would be sad to watch the reason for that go, but oh well.
“What are we?” He asked, his gaze fixed squarely on her. “When I got my memories back, I was worried you might have…”
“You thought I had killed myself because I saw you die. Wow, I don’t know if I should call you a condescending or a self-important asshole.”
Mason froze. He hadn’t looked at things from that perspective.
Lexi, on the other hand, realised her joke might’ve come off wrong and shook his hand to break the ice.
“I was joking. It was a bad joke. Sorry.” She said, finally getting him to hear her. “You were right. When I saw you fall on the news, I felt this massive stone drop in my gut and punch a hole so big I thought I was gonna fall in. So you were right. I–I did wanna, you know, but I… I fainted.”
“Wait.” Mason couldn’t believe his ears. “Did you say you fainted?”
The person on the receiving end of the question covered her face and looked away, leaking a muffled, “Yes.”
The inevitable “that’s great. I’m glad that happened,” surfaced in his mind when he heard that, but he wisely held back from saying it.
“Did you get hurt? Are you okay?” He asked instead, gently roaming his hands over her spindly arms and shoulders.
“I’m fine.” She finally looked his way, unable to look him in the eyes. “You can laugh. I know you want to.”
Eager to get her mind off her shame and get his point across, he got back to his previous question.
“I’m asking about us,” He waved back and forth between them. “Because when you picked up the call, I was relieved, but also confused. What I feel about you, I don’t think it’s love. It’s more of… extreme like. And that left me thinking. Last week was fun, crazy fun, but is that all this is? Fun? Again, I have no problem if that’s what you want.”
“Extreme like huh.” Lexi said with a sly look.
Mason smirked and shook his head. “Out of everything I said, that’s what you pick up on.”
“Oh,” She walked her fingers across his thigh, over his crotch and up his midsection and chest. “So you want to talk about the fun instead?”
“Both.” He looked at the hand she had roaming over him. “I want to know what you want from this.”
“What do you want from this?” She countered.
Yeah. What did he want from this? The answer came readily. He wanted companionship. He wanted someone to rely on him. Problem was, he didn’t know how to say either of those things without sounding cheesy.
“I want you.” He said, having come with this answer after speeding up his thoughts for extra time.
Lexi ceased all movement, making him know he had her. So he went in.
“I want you. I want a combination of me and you where we do everything friends and couples do. I want to see where it’ll go. I want to enjoy the ride. I want to see how it’ll end. If… it ends.”
His smile got bigger and bigger with every word. Huh, who knew pouring your heart out to someone felt this good. He had to do it more. All the more reason to see where she stood.
Leaning closer to the stunned woman, he palmed her cheek and alternated his gaze between her eyes and lips, printing his intent boldly on his forehead.
When she shifted closer to him, he took that as a yes and pressed his lips against her own. This kiss was nothing like the wild ones they’d shared. It was more of a passage of understanding between them.
Still, Mason wanted to hear her say it, so when they broke apart he asked. “This means yes right? We’re officially dating?”
Lexi looked like she couldn’t believe her ears. “Uh… obviously.” She said while pulling her blouse over her head. “Take off your clothes,” she added impatiently.
He certainly wasn’t going to refuse that order.
“Yes ma’am.”
.
.
.
.
Of all the places he expected to get summoned to for the power testing, Mason didn’t think it’d be a plane graveyard, in Tucson Arizona of all places. When he considered it though, he understood the intent behind it.
Any property damage that occurred, if they did indeed occur, were better focused on things that were useless and beyond repair, right? After all, that’s what the graveyard in the name stood for, he hoped.
Anyway, the flight here had taken them a total of five hours, and by them he meant himself, Mallory and a couple of Rayner’s agents. The director herself wasn’t present, making the list of things he had wanted to hand her useless for the moment.
His bullet and fireproof suits and clothing would take much longer to become reality, but it was all right. They were here for another thing entirely anyway. Speaking of, when were they going to start?
There were planes all around, but they kept driving instead of stopping.
“How big is this place?” He asked.
Mallory answered. “Over 2600 acres.”
“That’s…” He did the mental conversion and calculation in no time. “Four square miles, and it’s all just planes?”
“Planes and facilities.”
Right. He’d seen some people clinging to a few of the downed air crafts along the way.
“Hm…” He was feeling a bit impatient, but rather than reinforce the image of the bullheaded young boy they had of him, he asked something else.
“You said you were retired.”
“Is that a question?”
“I’m just wondering what a retiree is doing back at her former place of work. According to what I’ve heard, work is nothing but a slow death and a waste of one’s life. I may be wrong though.”
The old woman laughed. She was doing that more, he’d noticed.
“Well, you’re not wrong.”
Mason wasn’t going to fill that silence and she knew this.
“Did you see the news this morning?”
Something about her tone and the switch it made riled up his nerves.
“I assume it has something to do with me?”
“Not you.” She paused. “Compound V. It’s been authorised for use by military and law enforcement.”
“Oh…” He had no idea what to say, or even think. His mind went on its own roller coaster, mapping out what the possible future looked like. It was not pretty.
“After the attack, Vought fell under every eye in the sky, but they claimed they weren’t responsible and blamed it on terrorists.”
He didn’t need to call bullshit on that because she herself already knew. She’d been fighting them longer than he’d been alive.
“They were right.”
But he didn’t expect her to say this. He sat up with a frown. “What exactly are you saying?”
“We know for sure they had a hand in it, but as of now, every major terrorist group, cartel, crime family… every significant criminal organisation has supes of their own.”
Mason felt his heartbeat pick up. Not out of fear, and not of excitement either. Agitation is the best word he could think of. All of this happened in the span of a day? Were the Vought higher ups that insane?
Did they really want to maintain their relevancy that bad?
He could see the mind behind this plan. If you were being ousted for masquerading as a turd cleaner while in reality you were a giant turd, the best way to save yourself was to inflate other, more obvious turds and make them seem larger and smellier than you actually are.
What a bunch of turds. Stinking up the whole word because they refused to be washed away and eradicated.
“No way the government is on board right? They have to know it’s them. They have to know it’s Vought.”
He caught the tiredness and guilt in the older woman’s expression and it made him confused, but he let her speak.
“They do. However, so long as we can’t prove it, they’re untouchable. And even if we did, it doesn’t change the fact that the world just gained an influx of supes. People are going to die, and we need to be prepared.”
Suddenly, the guilt he picked up didn’t seem like a trick his mind played on him.
“Is that why you’re here?” He said, her presence and the distinct lack of Rayner’s finally making sense “On behalf of the guys at the top?”
She looked him dead in the eye. “Mason, listen to me carefully. You say the word right now, and I’ll get you somewhere far away, somewhere safe. You and that girl you’ve been sneaking off to go and see. No one will ever find you. No one will ever look for you. You can forget about all of this. Leave the fighting to us.”
He took in her words, huffed a chuckle and offered a silent apology to his grandad.
“Uhh… fuck that, respectfully.”
“Mason…”
“Listen. What you just described sounds like the end of the world. Am I far off with that label, or am I pretty fucking close?”
Silence.
“Thought so. Now, you sit here and tell me the sky is falling down, and you expect me to just run and hide like it won’t fall on me wherever I am? Second of all, you’re asking me to do nothing. Nothing. Know what happens when you do nothing? Fucking nothing!
If people are going to die and I knock the asshole about to do the deed on his ass, don’t you think that’s a pretty huge something? Third of all, and this is not a major point, just felt you should know. How do you think me agreeing to run and hide, while I leave all the fighting to a sixty year old woman, makes me look?”
As convincing as he thought his argument was, Mason expected the old woman to push back. However, she just smiled and sagged her shoulders.
“Rayner said you’d refuse.” She looked tired yet hopeful. “You’re not like other supes.”
‘Probably because I wasn’t born one.’
“I don’t know about that. What I do know is, bad things are gonna happen, and I can help. And I’m going to, with or without you.”
‘This was your plan all along. Right Maya?’
“Vought wants their supes in the military.” Mallory said all of a sudden. “That’s why I’m here. Right now, they’re the only alternative and in the process of finalizing the deal with the DOD. However, if the military gains a supe, a competent one that is amenable to them and hostile to Vought—”
“Then the deal falls through.”
“There’s a chance. A small one, but yeah… we won’t need Vought if we have our own Homelander.”
Right then, Mason realised his whole life was going to be one target on his back after another. They’d already tried once and almost succeeded. There was nothing to stop them from trying again.
The first episode showed that Homelander was willing to murder kids if it ensured Vought would stay afloat. How much more him?
What was the alternative though? Run and hide?
Again, fuck that.
Sorry granddad.
Alternate title: A Bunch of TurdsSo, the show ended and I watched the finale today. I waited for all the episodes to come out since I love binge watching.
Absolute cinema. I know people are clowning on it, calling it garbage and other stuff, but I enjoyed every second of it. And that’s probably because I have a low threshold for enjoyment. I tell people my all time favourite show is Arrow and they look at me like I just said 1+1 is three.
That’s me I guess.
Oh, the last episode… the phrase “Indomitable Human Spirit” just kept replaying in my head. Like, every scene and especially the final fight. I loved it. All of it. And frankly, this is not one of the shows that I’m sad to see end. It ended beautifully, and perfectly.
One thing I’ll say though is the marketing they did for the season is where people are rightfully angry. They showed the world in flames yet Homelander did nothing even close to the sort. Well, he did kill all those people in the freedom camp in episode 1, but it’s nothing we haven’t seen him do before. Which sorta fits his personality. The guy to the very end wanted people to love him. His motivation never changed. Going on a city or countrywide massacre would alienate him from everyone, no matter how devoted they are. Their hearts and minds would never change. They would always be afraid of him.So yeah, that’s my two cents. Great show, all the way to the end. Don’t take my word for it though. Watch it for yourselves. If you think it’s garbage, then that’s okay. You're probably right and my taste is trash.