#and it IS coming

[hom3landr]

Hail Mary

Homelander x Unnamed OC

She’d left the faith a long long long time ago. But with a quickly growing desperation, she decides to cry for help.

CW: This is very much a vent fic and Christian themes are prevalent. Also full disclosure, the relationship between Homelander and the OC in this fic is not fluffy and is perceived as one-sided from the OC’s pov.

Homelander is long asleep as she finishes her prayers. Her eyes sting from scrunching them closed, as though the discomfort will send the words up faster. She means every word. She may doubt the effectiveness but the sentiment is sincere. The hope is too, even though most people not privy to her thoughts would hardly call her a believer. 

Still, she’s nice and kinder than the people at Vought deserve. She’s so sickly sweet that it makes her stomach turn sometimes. It’s as if she’s trying to make up for his cruelty tenfold. She’s sure it’s appreciated. She highly doubts it’s respected. She knows it isn’t trusted. How could it be? When a soft word from her is quickly lost in the echo of his hatred.

She can’t change him with her love. It’s futile and stupid to believe so. He sees her as a warm body. An easy lay he can turn to when he doesn’t want to try too hard. Her adoration is appreciated…but not respected. He isn’t cruel to her but he isn’t exactly kind either. The only moments of true tenderness happen after a good fuck, and even those moments quickly fade. It didn’t used to be like this. Not until his grand plan. She’s human. A fact he was able to overlook before is now a dirty little secret. She knows when the time comes he’ll tie up this sordid loose end.

She opens her eyes and stares up at herself in the mirror. Her face is blank. The accusing stare of her other self having long given up the fight.  She pictures herself a martyr, dying for love. A blasphemy that threatens to cancel out her recent pleas to heaven. He’s rubbing off on her. She’s starting to inflate her own importance in order to justify some reason for her actions. Not unlike Homelander’s mad claims of his divinity. She chides herself. She doesn’t believe she can save him. But she holds one last hope that powers that are greater than her might. Faith during adversity, that has to count for something. Even if her backside hasn’t felt a pew since she was a teenager and this is a desperate hail mary to erase the writing on the wall.

“But who prays for Satan? Who in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most”

Mark Twain isn’t exactly a biblical figure. But the quote makes sense to her. So she prays and prays and prays. Homelander would mock her for it if he knew. Then he’d roll her under him and make her cry his name to the heavens. Double whammy, blasphemy and premarital sex in one fell swoop. Her old pastor would be appalled. At least this time his fire and brimstone rails against her religious shortcomings would hold some weight. She holds shame for her complicity in Homelander’s crimes but she’ll never feel shame for the sex. It’s the only time she feels truly holy.

It’s one of God’s greatest commands, isn’t it? To love. She’s read that passage enough times. And she does love Homelander. So much so that she’s willing to give up her life for him. It’s why she doesn’t run away as she sees fate speeding towards them like a freight train.

John 15:13.

Or maybe she’s just fixated on the whole martyr thing again. 

She startles a little bit as he moans and twitches in his sleep beside her.  His brow furrows as he grips the sheets, the fabric clearly strained to its limits. He’s having a nightmare. And she fights back the urge to wake him out of it. Her throat closes up at the memory of the last time she tried, how he’d gripped her around the neck and squeezed in his lingering panic. No apology was given but he was so sweet to her the week after that she almost fooled herself into believing that her desperate pleas might have reached heaven after all. So no, she doesn’t comfort him. That will have to wait till the morning, if he even admits something was wrong at all. He’s stopped admitting a lot of things to her. He just can’t risk the ever looming plan. 

Maybe it is a lost cause.

 “God helps those that help themselves” She doesn’t remember where that’s from. If it’s from the bible or if it’s merely a quote that fits perfectly regardless of the origins.  Homelander certainly isn’t interested in helping himself out of the growing pit he’s digging beneath him. Well…not in any way that really matters. How can he? How can he crawl out when all he’s ever known is darkness?

She remembers the story of Moses. Rameses (it was Rameses wasn’t it?) was no peach. He was a slaver and a cruel ruler to the israelites. Not someone to be admired at all. Even at the peril of Egypt, he’d refused to let Moses’s people go. 

Except that wasn’t quite true, was it?

Exodus 9:12. 

“And the LORD hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he hearkened not unto them; as the LORD had spoken unto Moses.”

Exodus 9:27

“Then Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron. “This time I have sinned,” he said to them. “The LORD is in the right, and I and my people are in the wrong.”

Exodus 10:1 

“And the LORD said unto Moses, Go in unto Pharaoh: for I have hardened his heart, and the heart of his servants, that I might shew these my signs before him:”

The verses pelt her mind like heavy rain. Her butt may not have felt a pew in a while but she still remembers. It had never seemed quite fair to her. Perhaps the plagues could have been avoided, had a point not needed to be made. He was about to let them go. God had removed his agency for the sake of a plan already written in the stars.  Ramses deserved punishment undoubtedly but for a God who was all about redemption… 

“You’re cherry picking”  

Mr. Fire and Brimstone speaks directly in her mind. That was always her cardinal sin. She sought out the good and ignored the judgement. She had the gall to question. It used to drive him mad. The fact that she’d never felt the urge to hate. He couldn’t scare her straight and it had wounded his pride.

Homelander didn’t need God to harden his heart anyway. Vought had done that themselves. 

There’s another whimper from the man beside her and her fingers twitch as she aches to soothe him. She’s survived the pain once and he’s suffered more than she’s ever had to. Surely, the pros outweigh the risks. She can take what comes if it means she can ease the burden he carries.

Damn…she just can’t shake the martyrdom. As if 

her actions aren’t selfish. As if her prayers aren’t a slap in the face to everyone he’s hurt. She can’t lose him. Her pleas are self-serving at best, downright cruel at worst. If divine intervention does happen, then God has stolen justice straight from the hands of Homelander’s victims. Redemption is a nice enough thought, when there’s no bodycount. 

Mumbled begging she can’t quite make out fills the silence now. A single tear drips down her cheek. A moment so perfectly, obnoxiously, melancholy, that it might have even won an Oscar had she been lucky enough to merely be an actor in a tragedy instead of a willing participant. Her throat tightens. 

Please

She prays. 

Do whatever you want to me. Damn me to hell in his place.  But please save him. I can’t. The world can’t. Please. Please save him from himself. 

No reply from the heavens but the mumbling stops. The nightmare passes. Salvation this isn’t but perhaps some peace. Perhaps the two of them aren’t lost to their grim fate after all.

Perhaps since his heart is already as hard as stone, heaven will decide to soften it instead. It would be a true blue miracle. God remembering his promise to Noah before he used Homelander to wipe the slate clean once more. A little rainbow emerging from the cold white sterility of Homelander’s childhood. 

She’ll keep her faith. She’ll keep praying for her sinner. And maybe, just maybe, she can finally take a break from the martyrdom.

[bitchfitch]

writing advice for characters with a missing eye: dear God does losing an eyes function fuck up your neck. Ever since mine crapped out I've been slowly and unconsciously shifting towards holding my head at an angle to put the good eye closer to the center. and human necks. are not meant to accommodate that sorta thing.

[daftpatience]

slow down for your disabled friends. thats like a bare minimum kindness that we shouldnt have to ask for. i love that youre so quirky and walking fast is a cool personality trait to you and all that but i bet you can count your physically disabled friends on less than one hand

[yeepof]

I understand that tall men are our POV characters, but surely being like a foot taller than everyone around them would have some occasional consequences

[anexperimentallife]

[septemberkisses]

the fact that i'm no longer the same age as the protagonists of novels and films i once connected to is so heartbreaking. there was a time when I looked forward to turning their age. i did. and i also outgrew them. i continue to age, but they don't; never will. the immortality of fiction is beautiful, but cruel.

[yourmajestybee]

EVERYONE NEEDS TO LOOK AT HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON UNTRAINABLE THE STAGE PLAY RN

[bearvverine]

me and gang at the haunted house

[beaft]

the little girl i was looking after today was so effortlessly funny and she didn't even know it. she wanted me to play "holidays" with her, which i assumed was a game where you pretend to be going on holiday - and it technically was, except her version mostly consisted of roleplaying being stuck in a traffic jam on the way to the airport

[sketching-shark]

Most blessed type of fandom experience tbh

[skullchicken]

If you have achieved something, please remember to observe a mandatory period of basking in the warm glow of your achievement like a lizard on a stone, lest you teach your brain that effort is futile, actually, because it didn't get to enjoy its happy chemicals, so, naturally, nothing good ever comes of trying. (And no, avoiding punishment is not a reward!)

I recommend, like, 5% of basking time in relation to whatever time you invested into achieving the thing minimum. And if you can't make your own bask, friend-brought is fine (= tell your friends!).

[lucybellwood]

Fucking slain in my tracks by this postcard on my friend’s dresser

[chaotic-neutral-knitter]

I think one of the kindest things you can do for people with various mental health struggles is just... let people back into your life after they've been absent for a while.

Making friends as an adult is so fucking hard already and isolating yourself from other people is a very common symptom of depression, anxiety, burnout, ocd, trauma, grief, etc. Which means that someone will do the hard work of recovery/healing and resurface back into a world where their previous friends have written them off because they stopped showing up.

So if you know someone where you're like "yeah we could have been better friends but they fell off the map a bit" and that person suddenly reaches out, or starts showing up to events even though you kind of forgot they were still in the group chat... well they may have been Going Through It and you don't actually have to punish them for their absence you can just be glad that they're back.

[my-hyperfixations]

Oh I’m gonna cry

[noodles-and-tea]

Our hextech dream….