Running From Himself 3-23A

Some days you floated through life like a dream.

Not like things were great or unbelievably amazing or anything like that. No, sometimes you just felt like time wasn’t real and you weren’t sure what day it was and you couldn’t really remember things right. Hughie had been feeling like that for a while, at least on the days that he wasn’t around Annie or when he didn’t have a gun in his hand.

He was pretty sure that a therapist would probably have some pretty bad things to say about that.

Right now, though, life didn’t feel anything like a dream.

“Oh my G-!”

No, the last thirty seconds felt more like a nightmare as what felt like a bomb had gone off close enough to lift him off the floor.

I… Hughie blinked as he tried to think past the black-screen where the last half-minute had been. His ears rang, a thin high one-note whine that drowned over the cumbia… the cumbia that was no longer playing because the boombox and speakers were on their sides spitting static.

What… Dust was everywhere, powdered drywall coating the insides of Hughie’s mouth and making it so much harder to focus. What happened… Hughie forced his eyes to open fully and that… Bomb?

That didn’t help much as he realized he was on his knees, hardwood gym floors shaking against his shins as he tried to catch his breath and get his head on straight. It only took him another second to realize that his arms were full, something with small warm hands gripping fistfuls of flannel as he blinked down.

Ryan?

He wasn’t sure how the kid ended up in his arms, Becca’s son somehow finding himself across the other end of the missing folding table and up against his chest. “You good? Hey, buddy, you good?”

Ryan’s mouth moved, but the whine still wasn’t doing him any favors; almost everything but his own heartbeat and early-onset tinnitus coming from a mile away and underwater.

The ground shook again, Hughie’s teeth shuddering as purple light strobed bright outside the shattered glass of the community center’s windows.

“Hughie!” Butcher?

“The kid!” Or maybe MM?

He really couldn’t tell past the thundering and shaking, all the voices scrambled and muffled and Hughie unable to make out any faces behind the choking dust. “Guy-!”

Mouth open to shout for anyone that could hear, Hughie Campbell didn’t even get a chance before the wall came in, cinderblock and drywall folded in with a hood ornament leading the charge. A scream overtook the shout as the front half of a Nissan Sentra tore through the community center, folding tables and chairs flying into already-broken bleachers as the tan car honked a dying call.

Hughie blinked again, his face inches from the hardwood and a nine-year-old still shuddering under him. I… I got him? He didn’t remember that either but he was two-for-two on kid-protecting so far and wasn’t gonna question it. I got him!

Another heavy burst of thunder rocked the building, screams from inside and outside fighting for the right to be heard over it, and Hughie quickly realized now was not the time to pat himself on the back. "Okay, okay, okay…"

Crawling. 

Or crouching.

Whatever you’d call some weird mix of the two, it definitely wasn’t a run.

Not very heroic, but with Ryan under him and explosions rocking the building, making himself a bigger target was seeming like a worse and worse idea. So, for now, it was gonna have to be elbows and knees over broken glass and rice as he dragged a kid under one arm like a sack of old laundry.

More screams tore through, dozens of voices fighting their way through the too-loud ringing in his ears — too many people desperate and panicked as they scrambled every which way under more floor-bucking booms from outside.

Drywall and ceiling tile rained down just in front of Hughie, almost forcing a flinch from him.

“Frenchie!” 

Now that was definitely Mother’s Milk. The though came to Hughie a split-second before another one landed, his eyes wide. I can hear again!

“FRENCHIE!”

"Ici, ici, ici!" The Frenchman stood in front of him as a pair of thin delicate arms forced themselves under Hughie’s armpits, forcing him to his feet in one smooth motion. "Up, Petit Hughie, up, up-up!"

“Th-there’s-!” Ryan rose with him as Kimiko yanked him upright, the kid still clinging to his shirt as Hughie tried not to shake as much as a kid a third his age. “There’s a car in here, Frenchie!”

“Yes, I see! A Sentra. Shit car.” 

Frenchie shook his head as the small Japanese woman held Hughie steady. Even still, Hughie fought to keep balance, one hand still remembering to grip the back of Ryan’s collar despite it all. 

“Now, come, come, come—”

The big form of Billy Butcher shut Frenchie up, the man’s face near-equal parts black and white with drywall dust and soot warring for space. "Oi." One arm went for Ryan immediately, already around the boy’s shoulder and pulling. “Give 'im 'ere.”

Hughie’s fingers gripped tighter. "Wait, h-"

“Billy!” Becca was suddenly there, hands out and almost dropping to her knees around all the shattered glass littering the floor. Hughie stepped back, hands suddenly empty as the mother wrapped up her son in a hug so tight it enveloped him almost completely. “Ryan, sweetie, look at me, it’s okay.”

“Come on, Becca, no time for that.” Butcher barely waited, the man gripping her sleeve and steering them both toward the back of the building. “Oi, Milk!” He yelled the name over his shoulder. “Back door!

"Go!" Hughie’s head snapped toward the sound, Mother’s Milk moving their way with a woman under one arm and a kid maybe five years old under the other; a small crowd of panicked people following the man from behind. "GO, Butcher, we got this side!"

Without wasting a moment, they all started out through the doorway, a dazed Hughie the last to leave the ruined community center gym with a car in it.

Outside. He nodded slowly as the wind hit him fully. Outside. 

The place where all of this was actually happening.

I… Brown eyes widened and watered as a new wave of smoke hit Hughie in the face, fires from houses and cars thickening the air and new screams flooded his ears; even the people Mother’s Milk had guided to safety joining everyone else in running left and right for cover. Maybe this wasn’t the best idea.

They hugged the edges of the community center, the entire group only getting as far as the hole in the wall — the original hole from before the car — and Hughie found his heart dropping so deep into his stomach that the rice from before had nowhere to go.

Oh. 

A hundred feet up and hanging above the intersection like gravity didn’t matter, the light coming off her hands strobed an ugly purple-white that hurt to look at. It was the same color he’d seen from a monitor in the back of a van two nights ago, something he had hoped more than anything never to have to deal with in person.

“...S-Stormfront.”

And she wasn’t alone.

Because why would she be?

The huge one landed hard enough to make the ground shudder, a small crater in the street under him by the time he raised his head. Hughie blinked through the stinging dust at the sight of that familiar barrel chest under that heavy bronze armor and fur-lined collar. Wait…

He knew that face.

Hell, Hughie knew that beard.

Hughie’s brain — his stupid, shitty, still-collecting-action-figures-in-his-twenties brain — supplied the name before anything else. Vikor.

The Vikor, from the ‘Valhalla’ trilogy; a set of movies that had started out mediocre and had only gotten worse with each one that came out. Hell, he had watched the first one twice and even gotten into the whole online debate about his hammer being CGI versus practical.

But this wasn’t a hero on the big screen.

"Skjaldborg!" No, as that oversized hammer battered aside an Altima and it became a missile into another building with a too-familiar boom, Hughie was more sure than ever this guy had never been a hero. “The street! Nothing crosses! Do not let them scatter, my brothers!”

“Thrymr! Left flank.” A large-chested blonde woman in all white and gold dropped down beside the brunette giant. “Roknar, with him.”

Norska… Hughie knew this one too, the shining woman a major part of the films since the first Valhalla introduced her in the stinger. He’d even seen her action figure on a shelf in a comic shop once.

A golden bracer pointed off into the distance, golden light bleeding off it and her shoulders as her head turned. “Galdar, you have the rooftops. Skandia…"

"I know.” A woman half her age floated beside her, eyes and body glowing a pale gold. “I see them, mother.”

"Then you know what to do."

Ryan… Hughie found himself struggling for breath and he doubted it was because of the smoke in his lungs. They’re here for Ryan.

That was the only thing that made sense. They’re gonna kill us and take him back to Homelander. Stormfront had met the kid, Homelander introducing the two of them just days before Becca called Butcher, and now she was here in Queens with a whole squad at their exact locatio-

Then a fire hydrant tore out of the ground at cannon speeds right into Vikor’s chestplate, the sound of ringing metal sending Hughie’s whole pet theory crashing to the ground.

A figure in a baggy red hoodie leaped off a rusty fire escape, fifty feet of space cleared in a single jump of thrumming air and tackled another one of Vikor’s armored partners. The blond in sleeveless armor tumbled into the hood of a yellow taxi, his square jaw denting the metal.

More doors burst open, people bursting out into the street; out of the alley, off rooftops, and one just tore clean through the roll gate of a shuttered storefront — the shutters molding to his skin in a tight layer.

Over a dozen of them, more than Hughie could count at once; his eyes too stuck on the dark red veins spider-webbing up arms, necks and around one guy’s whole eye socket.

Rojos.