Maeve didn't wait for an invitation. She strode into the center of my sterile apartment as if she owned it, her eyes cataloging the soulless luxury with a familiar contempt. She placed the bottle of whiskey on the glass coffee table with a definitive thud.
"Glasses?" she asked, her tone implying it was a test.
I gestured to the minimalist kitchen. "Top cupboard. Probably."
She found two heavy crystal tumblers, a concession to Vought's idea of class. She poured two generous fingers of amber liquid, not waiting for me to accept. She handed one to me, her knuckles scarred and calloused, a stark contrast to the delicate glass.
She raised her own. "To survival," she toasted, her voice flat. "The only game in town."
I clinked my glass against hers. The whiskey was smooth, expensive, and burned with a familiar, comforting heat. It was a human sensation, one the collar couldn't suppress.
For a long moment, we drank in silence, two caged predators taking the measure of each other. The muffled silence in my head was unnerving, but it allowed me to focus on the real, physical woman in front of me. The weight of her history, her compromises, her quiet, simmering rebellion was a palpable force.
"He made you wear the jewelry, huh?" she finally said, nodding at my neck.
"It was that or become a crater in Canada," I replied, the whiskey loosening my tongue.
A grim smile touched her lips. "Saw that. Classy. He used to just punch through freight trains when he was pissed. He's... evolving. Getting more creative with his tantrums." She took another long swallow. "The collar's not the worst thing. It's the silence that gets you. The quiet where your power used to be."
"You sound like you speak from experience."
She gave a short, humorless laugh. "You think this is the first time Edgar's put a leash on someone who got too close to the sun? I've had more 'mandatory power regulators' and 'stability consultations' than you've had hot dinners. The trick isn't refusing. The trick is making them think it's working."
She looked at me, her gaze sharp, assessing. "So, which is it? Are you playing along, or are you actually broken?"
The question was a razor, cutting to the heart of my predicament. With the echoes muffled, I had to find my own answer.
"I'm... recentering," I said, choosing the word carefully. "The power, the voices... it was a hurricane. This," I tapped the collar, "is the eye. It's quiet. I can finally hear myself think."
Maeve studied me, and for the first time, I saw a flicker of something other than cynicism in her eyes. A faint, grudging respect. "Good. That's the first step. Most of them, when they get powerful, they just lean into the noise. They become the hurricane. That's what he is." She didn't need to say Homelander's name. "You're trying to be the guy who learns to steer it. It's a harder job."
"And you?" I asked. "What are you?"
"I'm the one who saw the hurricane coming and built a bunker," she said, her voice heavy with a decade of regret. "I locked the door and hoped it would pass me by. Now, the bunker's starting to flood, and I'm realizing hiding was never going to be enough."
She poured herself another drink, the liquid sloshing in the glass. "He's going to come for you, Alex. Not a public challenge. Something else. He'll find a way to make you break. To make you take the collar off yourself and prove you're the monster he says you are."
"I know."
"He'll use your friends. The ones he doesn't know about. The ones you think are safe."
A cold knot tightened in my stomach. Annie. Butcher. MM. Frenchie. Hughie. "He can't find them."
"He doesn't need to find them all," Maeve said, her voice low and intent. "He just needs to find one. And he will. Vought's surveillance net makes the NSA look like a kid with a telescope. He'll find a thread, and he'll pull it until your whole world unravels."
The grim certainty in her voice was terrifying because I knew she was right. My public defiance had made everyone associated with me a target. I had been so focused on my own survival, my own moral struggle, that I had failed to protect the very people I was doing this for.
"The girl," Maeve said, watching my face. "Starlight. She's not as careful as she thinks she is. She's been using encrypted channels, dead drops. But there's a pattern. Homelander might be a narcissist, but he's not stupid. And he has resources."
Panic, cold and sharp, cut through the whiskey's warmth. Annie. I had to warn her. I had to get her out.
"Don't," Maeve said, reading my expression with unnerving accuracy. "Any move you make right now, any signal you send, he'll be watching for it. You contacting her is the fastest way to lead him right to her door."
"So what do I do?" The question was a plea, stripped of all power and pretense.
"You do nothing," she said, finishing her drink. "You play the good little prisoner. You wear the collar. You go to your therapy sessions. You let them think they've won. You make yourself small and predictable. And while you're doing that..." She leaned forward, her eyes blazing with a fierce, desperate light. "...you and I are going to find a way to break this damn thing. For good. Not just for you. For both of us."
This was it. The alliance I hadn't dared hope for. Not with Butcher's chaotic fury, but with the weary, hardened resilience of someone who had been fighting this war from the inside for years.
"How?" I asked.
She stood up, leaving the empty glass on the table. "I have ideas. But it's going to require a different kind of power. Not muscle. Not lightning. Information. Blackmail. The kind of dirt that even Stan Edgar can't sweep under the rug."
She walked to the door, pausing with her hand on the knob. "Get some sleep, Mazahs. Enjoy the quiet. It's the last peace you're going to get for a while."
She left, and I was alone again with the muffled ghosts in my head and the cold weight around my neck. But the despair was gone, replaced by a cold, focused purpose. Maeve was right. The game had changed. It was no longer about winning a public relations battle or surviving a direct confrontation.
It was about digging. I had to find a weapon so devastating that even a god would hesitate to use his power. I had to find Homelander's kryptonite.
And I had to do it with one hand tied behind my back.