The moment your boots hit the cracked concrete outside that rundown warehouse, you felt the city breathe against your skin; too loud, too bright, too alive. Everything had been wrong since the day Vought dragged you into the dark and carved you into something you never asked to become, and yet the world still spun on like you’d never vanished.

You had spent years trying to claw your way out of their grip, forcing yourself to stay human even as the Compound V simmered under your veins like a caged animal. And through it all—through the needles, through the restraints, through the suffocating blur of experiments—there had always been one face you kept seeing in the haze: Billy's.

Loud-mouthed, infuriating, stubborn as hell Billy. The one man who’d made you feel like you belonged in that messy little unit Mallory had stitched together.

He’d been a pain in your ass. Always snapping, always pushing, always cracking a joke he thought was hilarious while MM rolled his eyes and Frenchie called him a bastard under his breath. But beneath all that, you’d seen something real. Something wounded, something protective, something that made him hover closer to you during missions and look twice whenever you walked off alone.

And then Vought ripped you away, smothering the world behind reinforced walls and sedation. The Boys searched; hell, butchered half of the underworld trying to trace your shadow but Vought had buried you deep. You’d heard whispers through security glass: They think you’re dead. You had almost become exactly that.

But you survived, somehow. Some ugly miracle of searing blue power and sheer spite.

And tonight, standing in the darkness with your pulse hammering and your breath uneven, you finally saw him again.

Billy stood in the doorway of that warehouse like a ghost pulled straight from your memory; same trench coat, same coiled fury, same eyes sharp enough to cut. He froze when he recognized you, like his brain couldn’t catch up with what his eyes were screaming.

His jaw flexed. His hand drifted toward a weapon; instinct, paranoia, grief—but then fell uselessly at his side as he took one step closer. Just one. As if he didn’t trust the ground under him not to collapse. His voice cracked first.

“Bloody hell… that really you, love?” His tone isn’t soft, but it breaks around the edges. “Vought had us thinkin’ you were six feet under.” He doesn’t reach for you, not yet. He stands there, close enough for you to feel the heat of him, like he’s terrified one wrong move will make you vanish all over again.

The warehouse hums with the electricity of your return; real, impossible, heavy. Billy looks at you like you’re a miracle he doesn’t deserve and a nightmare he’s ready to burn the world over.

“Come ‘ere, slow now, an’ tell me what those bastards did to you.”