Mark stepped out of the basement and kept walking until the noise faded behind him. Eventually he found a park, mostly empty at this hour, and dropped onto a bench with a long breath.
A lot had happened in one night.
Now he was tied to Butcher’s mess, which meant sooner or later Homelander was going to get directly involved, and once that happened this whole thing would turn into a giant game of cat and mouse with the strongest psychopath on the planet.
Fantastic.
He leaned back, rubbing at his face tiredly while his thoughts drifted.
The more he looked at this world, the more obvious one thing became.
Nobody here got enough family love.
Seriously.
Homelander was the biggest example walking around in a cape.
Strip away the lasers and the god complex and underneath it all was basically an emotionally stunted kid raised in a lab, desperate for approval every second of his life. The man could split a plane in half but still needed strangers clapping for him to feel stable.
That was the insane part.
The strongest man alive and somehow still insecure.
Then there was Butcher.
Different damage, same bad result.
A father who beat him down for years until rage became his default setting, and now he walked around weaponizing that anger against everyone around him, including himself half the time.
Mark stared ahead quietly.
"Yeah," he muttered to himself. "This world really needed better parenting."
Then he closed his eyes, planning to get at least a little sleep before going back. After that he’d probably have to mooch some cash off Butcher for food.
Great organization.
As he drifted closer to sleep, a frustrated voice nearby snapped him out of it.
"...fucking unbelievable..."
More muttering followed, sharp and irritated, like someone trying very hard not to scream in public.
Mark slowly opened his eyes.
Blonde hair, normal clothes.
A woman had dropped onto the bench beside him without noticing he was there, shoulders tense, head lowered slightly as she kept venting under her breath.
Annie January.
Right after getting hit with the reality of what The Seven actually were.
The polished image, the hero speeches, the dream she’d spent years chasing—gone in a single day because behind the cameras it was all scripts, branding, and people pretending to care while treating each other like products.
’System, tell me this is your doing,’ Mark thought, watching her from the corner of his eye. ’Because out of every place possible, she ends up here? This is Jersey City. She’s supposed to be in New York.’
[I did nothing.]
A pause.
[Did I not tell you from the start? You are the protagonist.]
Mark nearly rolled his eyes.
’Yeah, and I already know where your brain is going with this. "A good story needs romance," right?’
[Correct.]
’That’s bullshit.’
[Correct.]
Annie finally noticed him looking irritated beside her and immediately straightened slightly.
"I’m sorry if I’m bothering you," she said, starting to stand.
"No, it’s fine," Mark replied. "Looks like you’re having a worse day than me."
She paused.
Really looked at him this time.
He looked exhausted. Not physically—just tired in a way she recognized immediately, the kind that sat behind the eyes after expectations crashed into reality too hard.
"...You too?" she asked quietly, sitting back down.
"Yeah," Mark said. "Otherwise why would I be sitting in a park in the middle of the day looking like my life collapsed?"
That pulled a small smile out of her before she could stop it.
"But you don’t seem that bothered," Annie said after a second.
Mark leaned back against the bench, staring ahead.
"Oh, I’m bothered," he said. "You just get tired after a while. At some point you don’t even have enough energy left to fake expressions properly."
Annie stayed quiet for a few seconds, staring ahead at the empty path in front of them while the earlier frustration slowly settled into something heavier.
Then she spoke again, softer this time.
"What do you do?" she asked, "when something you believed in turns out to be... completely different?"
Mark glanced at her briefly but didn’t interrupt.
Annie let out a small breath through her nose, almost laughing at herself.
"I mean, when you spend your whole life working toward something, thinking it matters, thinking the people there are actually good..." She shook her head slightly. "And then you get there and realize nobody even acts like any of it’s real."
The frustration came back near the end of it, harder to hold down now.
"They talk about saving people like it’s marketing," she muttered. "Everything’s scripted. Every smile, every interview, every ’heroic moment’—someone’s already planned it before it happens."
She looked away, embarrassed by how much she was saying to a stranger and yet unable to stop.
"I know it probably sounds stupid," she admitted. "I just thought it would mean more than that."
Mark leaned back slightly.
"There’s a reason people say never meet your heroes," he said. "Reality’s usually disappointing."
Annie looked at him quietly.
"Like imagine reading a romance novel," Mark continued. "You picture the writer as some emotional guy who understands love and relationships better than everyone else."
He gave a dry look.
"Then you meet him and he’s just a completely unbothered straight guy who treats emotions like unpaid work."
Annie blinked—
then laughed despite herself.
"So when your heroes disappoint you," Mark said, "be your own hero. Who’s stopping you from becoming the kind of hero you wanted to meet?"
Annie looked at him, caught slightly off guard.
"My own hero?"
"Yeah," Mark said simply. "Just become the person you were looking up to in the first place. Problem solved."
"You’re good at talking," Annie said, the earlier frustration finally easing off her face. "You kind of fixed my mood."
She held out her hand.
"I’m Annie January."
Mark shook it. "Mark Foster."
Annie smiled slightly. "So... can I get your phone number?"
Mark looked genuinely uncomfortable for the first time in the conversation.
"Okay, this is going to make me sound like an arrogant piece of shit," he said, "but I genuinely don’t have a phone."
Annie blinked once—
then laughed.
"No phone?"
"Long story."
That only made her laugh harder.
"Then you won’t mind taking my number instead, right?"
"Of course I don’t mind," Mark said.
*****
A/N: Advanced Chapters are available on Patreon.
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