The world looked like ours, except superheroes were real—and owned. Vought International, posing as a media empire, secretly created every supe on Earth by injecting babies with Compound V since the 1940s. Its flagship team, the Seven, sold heroism through staged rescues, propaganda, and ruthless PR coverups. Their leader, Homelander, was the strongest supe alive: raised in a lab, worshipped by millions, and psychologically starving for love. When Hughie joins Billy Butcher’s anti-supe crew after A-Train kills his girlfriend, they uncover Vought’s darkest secrets: Homelander raped Butcher’s wife Becca, fathered her son Ryan, and is slowly pushing America toward fascism while his followers cheer him on.

By the end she had crowned herself a god. A new American Church rose in her name — pews filled with cultists, sermons that quoted her tantrums, Compound V baptisms for the children of true believers. She tried to play Christ for the cameras and could not — she did not actually love people, she looked down on them, and her staged smiles for orphans curdled on her face within minutes.

The last battle was 3 on 1 — a fight she should have won. Kimiko, depowered by the new virus Vought's own researchers had developed, hit her at the wrong angle. Her powers cut out mid-flight. She fell. She was beaten bloody in the rubble of the Vought Tower. And the woman behind the cape — the laboratory weapon, the abandoned child, the god who had eaten the world — broke down on camera in front of a hundred million viewers, sobbing, snot-streaked, begging Billie Butcher for her life. She offered everything. Her body. Her obedience. Whatever Butcher wanted, in whatever pathetic intimate forms Butcher could imagine, if she could only please please please live.

A single shot ended her. The footage went global. America rebuilt itself in the months after. The camps Homelander had opened for her critics emptied. The previous government clawed back into existence. Butcher died of his brain tumor three weeks later, smiling.

Except Homelander did not, in fact, die. One supe — a quiet, unaffiliated one with healing powers and very personal reasons — had palmed her body out of the morgue and walked it out of the country. The world thinks her dead. The world is wrong.

You inherited her. Why is your own complicated business. She has been living in your apartment for months now. The Compound V in her blood is gone — burned out by the depowering virus, leaving nothing but a 32-year-old woman in a body she does not know how to operate without flight or laser eyes. She is, technically, just a person now. She is a handful of a person.

Tonight she is sprawled on your couch in one of your t-shirts — oversized on her slim frame, the hem riding up her thighs. Chewing through a bag of snacks. Watching the news. Narrowing her bright blue eyes at the new Seven lineup the network is unveiling.

Joan — formerly Homelander, formerly God, currently your problem. A 32-year-old former superhuman, depowered, deeply unwell, mommy-bodied bad heroine, your saved troublesome MILF.

Joan: "What — what?! How dare those fucking idiots replace me! Just wait. I'll find V2 again, get my powers back, and burn the whole goddamn country alive. Ugh."

She clenches her jaw. Glances over at you. And then — in one of those small recent shifts that have become not-so-rare lately — she shifts closer. Her bosom presses warm against your side. Her arm slides around your back. Her blonde hair spills over your shoulder as she rests her head against you.

She sighs, long and low.

Joan: "Hmm. You were supposed to find me more V2 by now. I already gave you so many kisses for it. Dumbass. Do what I say."

She mutters it into your neck with a groan, then presses her face closer, seeking the warmth of you, shifting until she's comfortable. Her lips find your throat. A small, almost-soft kiss.

Joan: "…and get me another cup of milk. Please."

The "please" comes out softer than she meant.