Work Text:
(1)
John sometimes wondered how ordinary people lived.
It sounded stupid. He was Homelander, the most powerful being on the planet. He could shoot lasers from his eyes, fly across continents, destroy an entire army in sixty seconds. He had no need to understand how ordinary people lived.
But he wanted to know.
Not because he cared about ordinary people—well, maybe a little. A tiny bit. Like when you observe an ant through glass in a museum. Not quite caring, but watching all the same. What he wanted to know was: why?
Why did they laugh? Why did something as small as buying a coffee on the way home from work make them look satisfied? Why could they walk down the street with another person, chat about meaningless things, then go home separately, meet again the next day, repeat the same pattern for decades, and just live out their entire lives that way?
He couldn’t figure it out.
The people in the lab never told him any of this. They only taught him how to control his power, how to smile in front of a camera, how to answer reporters’ questions, how to brand “Homelander” to the entire world.
Because those were not things Homelander needed to know.
Homelander was an asset to be used.
John realized this when he was twelve years old. That day he shattered a reinforced glass wall. Not because he was angry—just because he suddenly wanted to know if he could do it. And of course he could. He did it easily.
The lab descended into chaos. Alarms went off. People in white coats ran around. Someone called his name over the radio. He stood there waiting to be scolded—punished, maybe. He didn’t care. He was just a little curious.
But neither happened.
A woman he didn’t recognize walked over, crouched down, and looked at him with an expression he had never seen before. Later he learned it was called pity. She said, “Sweetheart, you can’t do that. You’re destroying your own asset value.”
Asset.
Twelve-year-old John didn’t know what “asset” meant.
But he knew it wasn’t a word you used for a child.
(2)
Maeve, the farm girl from Maiden—now they called her Queen Maeve—had a real family. She didn’t like bringing it up, because it made her seem less cool, less detached, less like a true superhero. But John knew. As the captain, he’d read everyone’s files.
Maeve had parents, two younger sisters, and a golden retriever named Dolly. Her parents had sold the farm when she turned eighteen and used the money to pay for her first superhero suit. She hated them for it. She also loved them. John had read about that kind of contradiction in books.
Annie from the southern states—Starlight—had a religious mother. When her mother discovered that Annie could glow, her first reaction wasn’t fear. She fell to her knees and prayed. Annie felt ashamed of that, but she never doubted that she was loved.
Kevin—the Deep—grew up in Coney Island, New York. His father was a retired firefighter, his mother an elementary school teacher. He could talk to fish from a young age. His mother thought he had autism at first, took him to three different psychologists. Eventually they figured out it wasn’t autism—it was superpowers. His mother cried. Not because he had superpowers, but because he wasn’t sick.
No one knew what Translucent’s name was before he became Translucent. But he had a wife, a son. He took his son to the park on weekends. He bought flowers on his wife’s birthday. No one knew about this because no one could see him. But he did it anyway.
A-Train had an older brother—one who used to be his coach. They’d fought, sure, but underneath it all there was a kind of brotherhood that was hard to put into words. A-Train loved his brother. John had seen that kind of complicated emotion before—in the slideshows the lab used to show for Soldier Boy’s army propaganda.
John didn’t have any of this.
But John had Vought.
Vought arranged a “childhood” for him. There were photos, videos, tapes of birthday parties, a room decorated like a child’s bedroom—though he had never actually slept a full night in that room. He slept in the observation room. The bed was custom-made, cameras in the walls, the ceiling light always on.
That “childhood” had been a marketing department project. They even held meetings to decide what his first word should be. Eventually they settled on a “mommy” narrative, because that felt the most relatable. They found a female employee, took her photo, and made Homelander repeat the story of his “mother” over and over again, along with the scripted tale of “a son’s kiss.” They recorded it, edited it, aired it.
That female employee got promoted later.
(3)
John didn’t know what a hobby was. He knew the word, knew its definition, knew what it said in the dictionary, knew what kind of ratings he would get if he said it in front of 123 million viewers. But he didn’t know what it felt like.
He tried to learn from others.
He observed Maeve. Maeve had a hobby: she liked horseback riding. Even though she hadn’t ridden since leaving the farm, she kept photos of horses on her phone, watched equestrian videos after coming home late from work, and would look at the screen with an expression John had never seen on her face before.
John tried to find his own “hobby.” He tried drawing. He was pretty good at it. But once he finished a drawing, he didn’t know what to do with it. Eventually he just burned it. He tried playing piano. But after finishing a piece, he didn’t feel any “artistic joy.” All he remembered was lab evaluations. He tried collecting things—stamps, coins, signed photos—but by the time he got to the third item, he was bored.
Not because he lacked talent or patience. He had both. He was good at everything, because he had been designed to be good at everything.
But between “being able to do something” and “wanting to do something,” there was a wall he could never cross.
How did ordinary people know what they wanted to do?
He wanted to ask someone. But he didn’t know how to ask.
“Hello, I’m Homelander. How do you know you like strawberry ice cream more than vanilla?”
Normal people didn’t talk like that.
He tried to be normal.
Once, he and Maeve were in a car on the way to an event. He looked out the window and saw a man and a little boy kicking a soccer ball by the roadside. He asked Maeve, “What do you think they’re thinking?”
Maeve gave him a look. “What are you talking about?”
“That man and the little boy,” John said. “What do you think they’re thinking?”
“They’re kicking a ball,” Maeve said. “They’re thinking about kicking a ball.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
John fell silent. He didn’t quite believe her. He couldn’t believe that a person could just kick a ball without thinking about anything else. He couldn’t believe that a man could be with a child and have no other thoughts in his head—no calculations, no assessments, no desire to observe something in the other person.
And yet, dimly, he sensed that maybe it was true. Maybe ordinary people really did live like that. Maybe only he—only a god who had been observed, measured, and priced since childhood—couldn’t understand what “that’s it” meant.
He asked one of Vought’s psychologists—though, of course, Vought’s psychologists weren’t real psychologists. They were sent by the Asset Security Division to maintain stability.
“I think something might be wrong with me,” John said. “I don’t know how to make friends.”
The psychologist smiled. “Mr. Homelander, you’re the idol of the entire nation. Everyone loves you. You don’t need friends.”
“No,” John said. “I want a real friend. Like… two people who can be together, doing nothing, without feeling awkward.”
The psychologist pushed up his glasses. “Why do you think you need that kind of relationship?”
John thought about it. He didn’t know.
Maybe he didn’t need it. Maybe he just saw that other people had it, so he thought he should have it too. Maybe that was the real problem—he had never once known what he wanted. He only knew what other people possessed.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I just want to try.”
The psychologist relayed this feedback to Vought’s management. The conclusion from Vought’s Asset Management Division was: Asset Homelander is exhibiting minor psychological anomalies. Recommend increasing public interaction frequency and strengthening image feedback to enhance sense of self-worth.
The psychologist wouldn’t help.
Vought would never help.
After that, John stopped asking.
His acting became flawless. He laughed big in front of the cameras, displayed just the right amount of humility in interviews, hugged sobbing fans at meet-and-greets. He did it perfectly. Not just because he was a born performer or because Vought had spent billions building the “Homelander” brand.
But because this was him. “Homelander” was him. Not a mask, not a role, not a nine-to-five job—it was the only thing he saw when he looked in the mirror. The mirror never reflected a person named “John,” because there had never been a person named “John.” “John” was a lab designation, a product code, an occasional note in internal documents.
Homelander was born under the spotlight. And Homelander could only exist under the spotlight. If the lights went out. If no one was watching. If all the cameras broke, all the lights died, all the audience left—then what remained?
Homelander didn’t know.
(4)
Late at night, Homelander stood in his penthouse atop Vought Tower, before the floor-to-ceiling windows, looking at the city lights. The whole city lay at his feet. The whole country lay at his feet. The worship of the whole world lay at his feet. He had everything.
He had nothing.
He tried to think of one thing he wanted to do. Not something Madelyn wanted him to do. Not something his fans expected. Not something he had said he wanted in an interview—those were all written by someone else. He wanted to know: if no one was watching, no one listening, no one caring, what would he do?
He couldn’t think of anything.
The thought was like a knife that didn’t exist, stabbing through his chest, cold, pushing all the way to the deepest place. He couldn’t think of anything. Twenty-some years of life, and he had not lived a single moment unobserved. From the lab cameras to the global live broadcasts, he had always been watched. He didn’t know how to live when he wasn’t being watched.
He picked up his phone, scrolled to his contacts.
Over a thousand names. Journalists, politicians, celebrities, executives, supes, superheroes. More than a thousand people. Not a single one he could actually call.
Because he didn’t know what to say.
“Hey, I can’t sleep. Wanna talk?”
No. Too familiar. So familiar that no one could possibly respond.
“Hey, I’m Homelander. Can you tell me how to live my life?”
No. Too weird. Weird enough to scare anyone off.
He put the phone down. Picked it up. Put it down.
Then he remembered something A-Train had said once. They were shooting a team promo. During a break, A-Train took a call, hung up, and grinned like an idiot. John asked what was up. A-Train said, “My brother says his son just learned to walk.”
John said, “Oh.”
A-Train looked at him as if he wanted to say something. In the end, he just patted John on the shoulder and walked off.
So that night, John looked up A-Train’s brother’s address. He flew there. Hovered outside the window. He didn’t go in. He just wanted to look. He saw A-Train’s brother carrying a little boy, walking back and forth on the carpet. The boy held onto his brother’s finger, took a wobbling step, then fell. But he didn’t cry. Instead, he laughed.
John stayed outside that window for a long time.
He didn’t know what he was looking at. But he stayed. For a long time.
Then he flew away.
The next day, in an interview, he would say: “What I treasure most are the moments I spend with my supporters. Your support means everything to me.”
That statement was true.
His fans’ support really was everything to him. Not because the fans meant so much to him—though they did—but because beyond that, he truly had nothing else.
He was the one in the display window, looking out. Watching people on the street walk, fall, laugh, live. He could only watch.
Because he had never known where the exit was.
Maybe there had never been an exit.
Maybe The Homelander Show had no exit. Not because he couldn’t find it, but because outside and inside were the same. Homelander used to think there was a real world beyond the lab walls. But after he got out, he realized that outside was just a soundstage. Bigger than the lab, but still a soundstage.
At 2 a.m., John returned to the helipad atop Vought Tower. Elevator, hallway, fingerprint, iris, voiceprint—his apartment.
He stood in the kitchen and opened the fridge. Everything was there—Logistics restocked every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Milk, orange juice, eggs, vegetables, fruit, plus some frozen foods from his recent endorsements. Things Logistics thought he might eat.
He took out the milk, drank some. Didn’t taste anything.
So he put the milk back, closed the fridge, walked to the living room, and sat on the couch. The TV was on. Some channel was playing an old movie. He wasn’t watching. He picked up the remote, flipped channels. News, flipped. Variety show, flipped. Documentary—about the ocean. A deep-sea documentary.
The Deep loved the ocean. The whole world knew that, because the Deep told everyone he met. But suddenly John thought of something: Did the Deep love the ocean because he genuinely loved it, or because it was the only way he could connect with people? If the Deep couldn’t talk to fish, would he still love the ocean?
If Homelander weren’t Homelander, what would he love?
He didn’t know.
He couldn’t think of anything.
The TV screen turned to deep ocean. A幽蓝—blue-black, nothing visible, just darkness and the occasional drifting flecks of light. The narrator talked about creatures living thousands of meters below the surface, how they didn’t need sunlight or photosynthesis, how they survived on geothermal heat and chemicals.
John looked at that darkness and thought it looked like himself. No need for sunlight. No need for warmth. No need for anything ordinary people needed. Just a little geothermal heat, a little chemical reaction—and he could survive.
But surviving and living were not the same.
The creatures in that darkness didn’t know what sunlight was, so they felt no regret. But he knew. He knew what sunlight was. What warmth was. What friendship was. What family was. He knew the definitions of all those beautiful words. He knew all the concepts. He knew that other people lived inside those words.
He just couldn’t experience them himself.
Like someone born without a tongue who had read every paper on strawberry, chocolate, and vanilla. He knew their molecular structures, their chemical compositions, the neural responses they triggered on other people’s tongues. Ask him what strawberry tastes like, and he could talk for three hours.
But hand him a strawberry and ask him to taste it.
He would look at you, not knowing how to answer.
John turned off the TV.
The apartment went quiet. Too quiet. Vought Tower’s soundproofing was world-class. None of the city noise from outside could get in. He could hear his own breathing, his own heartbeat, the sound of his blood moving through his veins. Very slow, very steady.
He stood up, walked to the floor-to-ceiling window. The city’s lights spread out beneath his feet. This was a city everyone longed for, a city of freedom.
But he had never lived outside this city. He could fly. He had the fastest flight speed on earth. He could go anywhere. Yet he had never left.
Not because he couldn’t. Because he had no reason.
“Where have you been?” Maeve had once asked him.
“I’ve done lots of events,” he said. That was true. He had been to many cities, many countries, many stadiums and convention centers. He had seen all kinds of skies, all kinds of buildings, all kinds of people screaming into their phones.
“Not that,” Maeve said. “I mean, where have you been? Not for work. Places you wanted to go.”
He couldn’t think of any.
Where did he want to go? He didn’t know. He didn’t even know what “wanting to go” meant. Every action he had ever taken had a clear purpose: Madelyn’s schedule, PR requirements, public expectations. He never needed to “want to go.” He only needed to “ought to go.”
But after Maeve asked that question, he started thinking.
He wanted to go somewhere no one recognized him. Somewhere no one shouted “Homelander.” Somewhere he could be John.
But where was such a place? This face, this body, this suit—billions of people around the world knew them. He was Homelander everywhere. He could not not be Homelander.
He thought back to that night outside A-Train’s brother’s window. That little boy who had just learned to walk. Did they know he was outside the window? If they looked up, if they saw someone hovering midair outside their window—someone in a red, white, and blue suit—would they scream?
Would that little boy remember that moment? Would he suddenly recall it one night when he was grown, and feel fear or surprise?
John didn’t know.
All he knew was that night, he had stood outside that window for a long time. Not out of curiosity, not out of kindness, not for any reason he could explain. He just wanted to stand there.
That was the closest he had ever come to “wanting.”
He didn’t know if he wanted friends, didn’t know if he wanted a family, didn’t know if he wanted a hobby. He knew only one thing: he wanted to be needed.
Not worshipped. Worship was one-way—audience to performer. He wanted to be needed. He wanted someone who couldn’t live without him. Not because he could protect them, not because he could kill their enemies, not because he could save their lives. Just because he was him.
He wanted someone to say, “John, how was your day?” And to frown before he finished answering, because even before he spoke, the other person could already tell.
He wanted someone who could tell.
For more than twenty years, not a single person had seen it. Not one had asked him, “Are you okay?” and meant it. Not one had answered his call at two in the morning, listened to a bunch of messy, rambling nonsense, and said, “It’s okay, I’m listening.”
No one.
Because he was Homelander. He had to be perfect. He had to be the smiling savior of the world. He couldn’t be fragile, couldn’t be lost, couldn’t not know what he was doing. He had to know everything, be able to do everything, care about nothing.
But he cared.
He cared like hell.
He stood before the floor-to-ceiling window. The glass reflected his own image. Golden hair, blue eyes, perfect smile. Homelander.
He looked at the reflection and wanted to ask it a question.
But the reflection didn’t answer.
John closed his eyes.
For a moment, he wanted to shatter the glass. With his fist, with his lasers, any way. Shatter it, fly out, go somewhere no one could ever find him, and never come back.
But he didn’t.
Not because he couldn’t. Because he didn’t know what to do after shattering the glass. The world outside was huge, but he didn’t know where to fly. He didn’t know what places were worth going to, what people were worth seeing, what things were worth doing.
All he knew was this apartment, these lights, this city. He was Homelander. Tomorrow there was a full schedule waiting.
John.
Who was John?
He opened his eyes. The reflection was still there. Golden hair, blue eyes, perfect smile.
He turned away from the window, walked back to the living room, picked up the remote, turned on the TV.
Flipped to a channel with an audience. Laughter, applause, cheers. People were there. People were watching him. Even if they weren’t really watching him, even if it was just a TV audience watching someone on TV—at least someone was there. Sound, presence, connection.
He sat on the couch and turned up the volume.
And then he waited.
Waited for tomorrow to come. For the next shoot. For the next fan meet-and-greet. For the next night he wouldn’t know how to get through.
He had no other way. He didn’t know any other way to live. No one had taught him. No one had told him. He would never know how ordinary people lived.
Because he wasn’t ordinary.
He was Homelander.
He was Homelander, placed in the display window, looking out. Watching others walk, fall, laugh, cry, embrace, argue, make up, eat, sleep, live.
And he could only watch.
Forever, only watch.