Running From Himself 2-9 (Patreon)

The yacht cut through the grey, churning water, miles off the Jersey coast where everything looked the same kind of miserable . Hughie stood by the railing, the air cold and thick as the boat drove them deeper and deeper out into the open ocean as they waited for the Feds to show up and take the living bomb below deck off their hands.

They’d gotten the guy they were after, who had somehow turned out to be Kimiko’s fucking brother, because fate was just cruel like that. More than that, though, he was the supe-terrorist Raynor had been talking about right before Vought popped her head like a freshman’s zit. 

This wasn’t what a win felt like, though. Not that we’ve really gotten a lot to know what one feels like.

Their cavalcade of failures aside, this was still Kimiko’s brother, though. Nobody felt good about this, especially Kimiko. Honestly, just the look on her face when she’d helped them drag him in… Jesus, it pretty much killed any of the good mood for bringing down any supe.

Can’t feel good about this. He really couldn’t, not when Frenchie told them (from what he’d gathered from Kimiko) that the guy had been radicalized heavy by the Shining Light. 

Heavy as in, kill all American dogs, heavy. 

It was so bad that even Kimiko knew turning him into the Feds was for the best, for his safety if not so many others. She was torn up about it but she honestly would rather have him locked up than lasered in half by the psycho in a cape running the Seven.

He could feel Butcher at the stern without even looking. A silhouette of pure, simmering rage against the hazy dawn, staring back at a country that probably had them on a kill list by now . The man had been a walking thundercloud for a week and a half, ever since the team—his team—had basically told him to get with the program or get the fuck out. 

Considering the guy had been gone for the better part of a year, Hughie didn’t think he’d be that torn up about in the first place. That was the thing, though…

Butcher just seemed to go with it.

He’d been quiet, too. Don’t like that one bit.

The quiet was the worst part. Butcher wasn’t a quiet guy. Quiet meant something was about to break.

Hughie took a breath, the cold air stinging his lungs. His hands, shoved deep in the pockets of his thin jacket, felt numb. Someone had to say something. For the team.

And MM and Frenchie were too smart to walk into the spinning propeller of brooding doom that was Billy fuckin’ Butcher. 

Which left… him. Of course.

He walked over, sneakers slipping slightly on the damp deck until he came to a stop barely a good two feet from the man he had kinda-maybe-sorta looked up to. “Butcher? Hey.” 

His voice came out small, almost lost in the wind and the engine noise. The man didn’t move an inch, still staring out at the water like the world’s scruffiest statue. “Um, look, about last night… and, y’know, the other day. I just… I wanted to say I’m sorry. For… for yelling and all that. I know you were just trying to get the job done, like you do, and I just… I don’t want you to think I’m trying to, like, push you out, or… or take over or anything. It’s still your team. It is. I just think we gotta… we gotta do it different now, y’know?”

Butcher turned his head slowly, eyes cold and dead as he looked Hughie square in his. He didn’t say a word. 

Not even as he swung.

The world went white for a split second as Hughie’s head snapped to the side, mouth filling with the taste of pennies. 

The hard metal of the railing slammed into his spine as he stumbled back, confused and trying to keep from falling. Wha-The whole world spun so hard it made him dizzy, everything in front of his eyes a throbbing mess of pain and bright, strobing lights as his jaw burned.

Through his stinging watery eyes, he saw Butcher staring down at him, the rage, the week-and-a-half of simmering fury, just… deflating right out of him as he actually cracked a smile, a real one. “…I just needed to pop you one. All’s good, l-”

The words didn’t even finish leaving his mouth. Hughie wasn’t gonna let them.

“F-fuck!!” Hughie swung out, arm windmilling in a swing fueled by nothing but rage and the overwhelming need to wipe that smug look off Butcher’s face. “Fucking dickhead!”

Sloppy? Yes.Desperate? Of course.None of that mattered to Hughie, not a single bit, as his knuckles slammed hard into Butcher’s face.

Butcher's nose made this wet, crunching sound and for a second, fuck, just one perfect second, the man's eyes went wide with actual shock. Holy shit. I did it.

Then everything went to absolute hell, with flailing limbs and curses and blood in his mouth that might've been his or...

This wasn't a fight. Not really. 

It was a desperate scrabbling on a slick deck that kept rocking under their feet, trying to dump them both into the fucking Atlantic. The wool of Butcher's coat scratched rough against his cheek, then the hard deck slammed into his back, Hughie gasping for a second as he tried to get his bearings.

A fist connected with his ribs. 

Big and solid as a brick from some Queens construction site, it forced the air out of his lungs in a hard wheeze, but he wasn't... he wasn't giving up this time. Not after everything, not after ten months of this shit. Hughie swung back wild, a clumsy right hook catching Butcher's forehead, the younger man wincing in pain...

"Butcher! Hughie! Knock it the fuck off!"

MM's voice slammed down on both of them like a physical force, but it wasn’t enough to stop it.

"Stop this! Arrêtez, you animals!" 

Arms thick as tree trunks wrapped around Butcher's chest, lifting him clean off his feet. MM grunted with effort, jaw set in that way that meant business. Frenchie tackled Hughie around the waist a second later, the much smaller man taking him down to the ground with a surprisingly strong grip for someone who was… well, a 5’8 Frenchman.

They got separated quickly enough. 

Two dogs pulled apart, both breathing hard and bleeding from somewhere. Hughie's jaw throbbed where Butcher sucker-punched him but for some reason, he couldn’t really care about that as much as he thought he should. Least I made the bastard bleed too. 

Butcher spat thick blood onto the deck, dark red against weathered wood. A second later, the British man raised his gaze, eyes fixed on Hughie with that look that promised violence, at the very least. Unfortunately for him, Hughie wasn’t really scared by that little anymore. 

"You've got a lot of nerve, you little cunt," he growled, voice thick and jagged as his accent dragged its way out. "A lot of fuckin' nerve. I call it square and you still wanna go for more, eh?"

"Fuckin' square?" Words tore out raw and shaking from Hughie’s throat, the taste of blood keeping him as heated as the feel of Butcher’s fists. Ten months ago, he would've apologized by now, would've backed down and... not anymore. "You glass me for no reason and wanna call it square? You act like we're the ones who fuckin' left your limey ass to rot! When that's what you did to us!"

"I told you lot already," Butcher snarled, struggling against MM's hold. "There were extenuating circumstances."

"Oh, fuck you and fuck your fucking circumstances!" Hughie wrenched himself free from Frenchie's grip, pointing a trembling finger. The shaking wasn't fear anymore. Not really. 

At least seventy percent of anger and Hughie was done pretending it wasn't there. "Be a goddamn human being for five minutes and maybe everyone in your life will stop wanting to ditch you!"

Butcher twisted out of MM's grasp not a second too soon as a high electronic ringing sounded out through everything. With a grunt as deep as the boat engine, Butcher pulled his satellite phone from his pocket, screen glowing in grey morning light, turned his back like they weren't even worth looking at.

Hughie stood there fuming, whole body still shaking from adrenaline and leftover rage. Frenchie's hand landed on his shoulder, cautious but steady.

Butcher's voice went cold. All business. Rage just wiped away like flipping a switch. "Mallory... Yeah, it's me... Package is secure. Three miles offshore, just like we said... Yeah, he's alive. For now... Listen, the asset, the girl... if she turns, I'll put her down myself. You have my word... Just be ready."

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

The door to his office swung open without the customary two-second pause that followed a knock. Stan Edgar barely had the moment to hold back a sigh, the man simply blinking down at his work. This new generation…

A young woman with hair a few shades darker than her pantsuit stood in his doorway, breathing so heavy he might have assumed she took the stairs from the lobby two at a time. It wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility, however unlikely it was. Ashley is a rather excitable one, isn’t she? 

The girl in question who had always been something of a disheveled mess of greedy corporate ascension, no matter how well she tried to hide it behind a smile and too-loud voice, seemed more frantic than usual. 

Something was different about her.

Maybe it was the pantsuit.

Maybe it was the raw panic.

He never was one for guessing games.

“Sir! Mr. Edgar! I-It’s a Code Black! Total…total brand implosion, it’s—it’s everywhere! They know, CNN knows, they have everything!” Her voice was a shrill, cracking thing, the sound of brittle composure shattering on marble.

Shelving a sigh, the older man finally allowed himself to look up from the quarterly report on his desk. Shame. The typeface was such a clean, satisfying sans-serif. “Ashley,” he said, his own voice low and unhurried, as he took in the state of his new VP of Talent; the girl’s usually-pale face now white as milk, those too-big eyes uncomfortably wide as she clutched at her phone like it was a holy relic.“We have discussed your blood pressure. The company’s health plan is excellent, but it does not cover self-induced cardiac events. Take a breath.”

“But sir, the leak! It’s happening! Right now! CNN has the story! They’re going to run a special report on Compound V! They’re calling it the biggest corporate cover-up in history!”

He glanced back down and calmly turned a page in the folder he was perusing, very eager to take in its details before his meeting with the president. It was a good report. Margins were up in the defense sector. “I can tell you’re worried, Ashley. And your concern for the company’s integrity is… noted.” 

He raised his eyes again, unable to ignore how the hysteria radiating off her was practically a physical wave; positively exhausting to share the presence of. “But you have not, as is often the case, heard the entire story. Our story, to be exact. Take another look at your phone. Check the push alert from Vought News Network that went out ninety seconds ago.”

She fumbled with the device, her hands shaking so badly she almost dropped it. He watched, a flicker of dry amusement in his chest, as her thumb stabbed at the screen. She pulled up the VNN app, a banner headline splashed across the top in bold, confident Vought-marketed lettering. The color returned to her face as a look of profound, baffled relief washed over her features.

“Oh.”

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

Hughie barely had a few seconds to clean up, barely a full minute of dabbing at his face with a piece of ragged cloth he grabbed out of one of the yacht’s cabinets before his phone started buzzing in his pockets.Hughie’s eyes went wide as he remembered the one person he’d already called three times today. 

Annie.

“Shitshit!”

Fumbling his phone out of his pockets, Hughie swore a few more times as his finger smeared blood against his phone, screen protector half-covered with the stuff before he wiped it off with his shirt. Jesus. Finally, he brought the phone to his ear. "H-hey, Annie," he mumbled, half-slurring with a busted lip and trying to talk past it.

"Hughie, oh my god, are you okay? You sound awful." Her voice cut through all the static in his head, clean and clear and worried. "Listen, forget that, just—turn on CNN. Right now."

Hope flared in his chest, stupid and reckless and probably about to get stomped on but... "You did it? You leaked it?"

"We did it."

A wide, bloody grin split his face and fuck the pain, they actually did it. "We did it! Holy shit!" He was already limping toward the small TV bolted to the wall in the galley, flicking it on with shaking fingers. "Guys, get in here! We did it!"

MM and Frenchie appeared in the narrow doorway, faces grim as death, with Butcher slouching right behind them like some kind of vulture.

"What is ze problem, Petit Hughie?" Frenchie asked, eyes wary like he was expecting another fight to break out.

Hughie pointed a shaky finger at the screen. The familiar red and white CNN logo filled the frame and his heart was hammering because finally, fucking finally they were gonna... "Look! We won!"

"...shocking new revelations about a designer chemical compound known as 'Rojo'."

His grin went stiff and wrong on his face, too tight as Hughie kept trying to smile past his confusion. Rojo? That wasn't... that wasn't what they'd given her. That wasn't the story. "Wha-?"

"Sources high up in the federal government have confirmed the existence of this dangerous substance," the reporter continued, voice grave as a funeral, "which they believe is being manufactured and distributed by super-terrorist cells. This 'Rojo' is reportedly created using biological cultures from naturally occurring superhumans and can be used to create so-called 'super-villains'—unstable, dangerous threats that officials are describing as little different than armed drug addicts."

I… I don’t understand. What’s going on? The news wasn’t even talking about Vought. Nobody had brought up one of the biggest companies in the world manufacturing super-babies. They were just talking about the supervillains. 

But... but we gave them the V. 

Annie… she had gone to all that work to get it. She…

She had told him how she torched one of her childhood friendships for the stuff, how she felt terrible about it, but she knew it had to be done.

How could they... 

"Hughie, I don't understand..." Annie's voice was this panicked whisper in his ear. "They twisted it. They took our story and they twisted it."

A sound snapped him out of his growing rage, filling him with another deeper, hotter, type of anger as he turned his head. Butcher shook his head, the man still in the middle of a low, cruel chuckle as he leaned up against the wall in the back of the galley. What now?

"Well, well, well,” the Brit clicked his tongue, as if he was almost happy to see all this fall apart for some reason. “Looks like you went and fucked our one ace right up the arse, son. Nice job."

MM slammed a fist against the wall, the big man's voice just a growl now. "Goddammit. They spun it. They spun the whole damn thing."

"Non, non, c'est pas possible..." Frenchie stared at the screen, face like he'd just watched someone shoot his dog. "Zey are magicians of ze bullshit. How do zey do zis?"

"What did you wankers expect?" Butcher's voice dripped with that condescending satisfaction that made Hughie want to punch him again. "You went to war with a media company using a goddamn press release. They got their story out first. They control the narrative. We're not just fighting men in capes; we're fighting the five o'clock news."

A loud chopping sound started filling the air, getting closer and closer until it was drowning out everything else. A police helicopter, Hughie realized with widening eyes (oh fuck), the thing descending on them fast like some kind of mechanical bird of prey. 

"This is the Coast Guard!” Oh, Coast Guard, that was even worse. “You are under arrest! Power down your engines now!"

Arrest? What the hell? How’d they even f- His eyes snapped to Butcher, who had the decency to look almost sheepish as he and MM stared him down.

Almost.

"Okay," Butcher said, shit-eating grin spreading across his bruised face like he was enjoying this whole clusterfuck. "You know how I said I got the boat from a friend? Well, what's a stranger but a friend you haven't met yet?"